Full Circle
by coincidencless
Summary: Sequel to Coup de What? With Deathwing gone, there was hope that relative peace would finally fall on Azeroth. And it did. For a while. But the strongest apocalypses are the ones that take the world by surprise.
1. Chapter 1:First Mission

**Disclaimer: I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**I'm really excited to be writing again. I've forgotten how it feels. If you're new, you'll want to check out my story Coup de What? to have an idea of what is going on here. And a quick note. This story will take place in several 'sections', which are just the fancy names I give for the parts of the story that are separated by big time-skips.  
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**Chapter published 3/5/2012**

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><p><strong>Section 1:Rising Flames<strong>

One year, thirty-two days, twelve hours, thirteen minutes, and twelve seconds after the epilogue of Coup de What?

Amanthe

I jolted awake with the horrible, gut-sinking sensation of falling. My breath caught in my throat, and I looked around frantically, my eyes tracing over the near unseeable cavern walls, taking in every drip, every contour, and every chip. I placed my hand over my chest, taking deep, gulping breaths, trying to slow my heart-rate to a pace where it didn't feel like it was going to break my ribs. The last thing I had known, I laid on the mat of twigs and leaves which served as my bed and closed my eyes. Next thing I knew, I felt like someone had pitched me over a canyon. This wasn't exactly the first time it happened, though mostly it happened whenever I tried to take a nap. I'd be laying there, when suddenly I'd feel that pit in my stomach and jerk. And it wasn't just me either, it happened to lots of other people. It was perfectly normal.

But by the Light, it _sucked_.

I blinked eyes, and pulled myself to my feet, turning my neck to relieve the crick in it before stretching up my hands. Once I felt my spine pop a little, I relaxed my hands, letting them fall to my sides. I held up my left hand and mentally called for it to glow slightly, enough for me to see farther than a meter around me. I willed my stiff legs to move forward, carrying me out of the small cavern chamber where I slept. I needed only a very short time to reach the chamber where I held the last remnants of the stag meat I had, which, after cooking, I kept from rotting by occasionally washing it in the Light, since using my preferred shadow spells on it would be worse than just letting it spoil. I mentally chuckled. Selriona wouldn't have _any_ problems with that, though.

I frowned when I saw how little remained of it. Just a few slabs of meat, cooked months ago, but kept unspoiled through the Light. I'd need to hunt today. I shrugged at the thought. Oh well. At least I _could_, thanks the my friend's training. Speaking of which...

_'Good morning, Amanthe. Yrlo are you doing?' _came Selriona's thought, along with a slight pressure above my ears. I didn't understand the entirety of the statement made in Draconic, one of the words sounding simply like gibberish to me, but I understood enough. I thought carefully, forming the Draconic words in my mind.

_'I'm good, thank... you. What was that word_ _after my name again? I don't remember.' _I bit into the stag meat I had picked up, chewing it before swallowing.

'_It means "how".'_ she said in Common.

_'Oh yeah, thanks.' _In addition to training me in the use of twilight flame, I had become semi-fluent with Draconic, which made understanding the conversations of the Twilight Flight easier when I entered Grim Batol to speak with Selriona. Telepathy over long-range was all well and good, but it couldn't replace face-to-face conversation.

I tore another chunk out of my stag and sat down, before thinking to Selriona in Common. _'You know, you never told me why exactly I need to learn Draconic. I mean, sure, if I'm going to be living here -'_

Before I could finish the thought, I caught Selriona projecting silence to me. _'... you just...'_ The unease in her voice resonated in my head. I'd never get used to that feeling of having someone else's thoughts in my head. It wasn't like I heard her voice all around me, it was like I was thinking in her voice, but it seemed more solid, more real. Exactly how it felt to her, too, I imagine. _'Amanthe, I'm not really comfortable talking about, about that. It's just...'_

_'What? It can't be THAT bad of a reason, can it?' _Selriona's continued silence gave me the answer. I changed the subject, eager to relieve the tension floating between our link. _'So, um.'_ I switched to Draconic for the next sentence, practicing the language. _'How are you doing?'_

She answered it with a little more enthusiasm, but I could tell my question of why she was teaching me a second language had depressed her. _'Oh, things are going very nicely. You know, same old same old.'_

_'I think I'm going to go hunt today. Just ran out of meat.'_ I told her, ripping another chunk out of the meat in my hands. I looked down at it. Almost gone. Huh.

_'That's another thing. You should always keep a bit of a surplus. I mean, what if you don't succeed today?' _

I stopped mid-chew, then slowly and carefully operated my mouth to chew as I 'spoke' to her. _'Oh... I should've thought of that sooner.'_

_'No, you don't say?' _came Selriona's voice, laden with sarcasm. _'Well, I'll leave you to your thoughts. Unless there's anything you want to talk about? I'm out of ideas.' _There actually _was_ something, why she was teaching me Draconic, but whenever I asked that, she became miserable.

A yawn escaped my lips before I could stifle it. _'Nope_,_ not really. Just going to go finish this, stretch, then hunt.'_ With that, I felt her stop using the link, the dull pressure above my ears fading. I finished my meal and groaned, stretching out my muscles, before wandering about my cave for the small spring of water I had found, heated to the point of near boiling inside the mountains. I found myself chuckling to myself as I walked towards my source of drinking water, the heat having killed anything that might make me sick. Here I was, 'roughing' it out in the wilderness. What would my family say if they saw me now?

The room that held my drinking water wasn't very big at all. The tunnel narrowed dramatically as I closed in, but I could still catch the little burble of water at the end, releasing steam into the air before it vanished back into the earth. I cupped my hands and extended them out, waiting until the hot water filled them, blew at it to cool it down, then carefully brought my face in to drink, being certain not to splash the water too much onto my skin. I repeated this several times. Slow, tedious, but it worked. I would wash myself later in the day.

Do _not _ask how I did so with that.

"Ah! Crap!" I yelled, jumping back as the water splashed onto my clothes, a smooth indigo color that Selriona had conjured for me. How she had done it, I didn't know exactly, and her answer revealed the function of her capacitor to me. She'd managed to use the energy in it to conjure it by feeding some other twilight spell into it. Regardless of how she'd done it, the shirt and pants were nice, and didn't impede my motion, so I could still hunt. I gripped my leg where the water had splashed, the heat from the near-scalding liquid not enough to make it undrinkable, but enough to be painful.

I finished drinking, and walked out to the front of my cave. I laughed again at that thought. I lived in a _cave_.

I sighed, taking in the scene of the place I lived, a little passage in between the mountain that hosted Grim Batol, and the one that held the Vermillion Redoubt. The sun spilled in through the valley, rays ricocheting off of little flecks of exposed mica and other gems unearthed by the battles that had taken place here, yellow light spilling through the gates far to the west like a flood. I grimaced at the idea of what came next. I knew it had to be done to mask my smell, but I'd never in my life enjoy covering myself in mud. I knelt, sighed, and got to work. Once that was done, I began walking, frowning as the dirt along my arms folded and cracked as my joints moved, eager to find the tracks of the stag that inhabited the area. It didn't take too long to do so; the valley laid in the middle of two mountains, and combined with the Wetlands close by, it was on the wet end of two rain-shadows.

In other words it rained. A lot.

This made finding the tracks of a herd quite easy, and I wasted no time in following them. Within an hour, I had found the rough location of the herd, and forced myself to _slow down_. One thing Selriona had taught me about in Stormwind was the 'bird alarm'. Birds in the area of the herd were ultra-sensitive to movement. It didn't take much to make them panic and warn other birds that something was there, and this chirping 'alarm' would also scare away my quarry. So I had to move really, really slowly. I covered myself in dirt again to mask my scent, and began slowly approaching, hiding among the boulders of the mountains until I could get a good look.

I crept forward at an agonizingly slow pace, but had to stay slow. I could barely make out a few birds flitting around, picking at the soil, probably at some worm or another, occasionally giving me glancing looks. They weren't my target, but of course, they didn't know that. Every time my hand touched the stone with the faintest of noises, each breath I took, I seemed to conjure forth a cacophony of noise. Tension welled in me as I slowly, but surely, made my way up the boulder and could see the herd. There were a couple of them below, grazing around, unaware of me in every way. I looked around and spotted one, which looked satisfactory. I smiled, and smote it with a blast of Light.

A yellow blast engulfed its head before it fell limply, the others scattering away, the half-dozen or so birds around taking off into the air as I suddenly became a threat. Within seconds they were out of my sight, but that didn't matter. I got what I had come for. I stood and jumped off the boulder I had blasted the stag from, weaving a levitation onto myself so that I could gently descend next to the body. The spell slowed down my rate of falling, but it didn't reduce the sensation. It felt like I fell quickly, but I wasn't. Which just made my skin crawl as I came to a gentle hover next to the stag, gently smoking where I had blasted it. With a mental command, I dropped onto the ground, the levitation spell gone.

I knelt next to it and looked it over, checking for injuries, signs of disease, and the like, things I couldn't make out from a distance. Once satisfied, I nodded and stood. "Alright. Great. I got lucky." Weaving a levitation spell onto the stag so I wouldn't have a nightmare carrying it back, I gently grasped one of its horns and began to lead it back to my cave-house. I hadn't taken five steps when I heard steps behind me. Like an idiot, I froze in place and turned around to see who it was.

It was three orcs, a tauren, and a blood elf.

My first instinct? OH GODS, RUN!

Almost all my life I'd been a member of the Alliance. Though I _technically_ wasn't anymore, and was in the neutral Twilight Flight, old habits die hard. I froze in place as we locked gazes. The tauren occasionally let out a strangled noise as the gray box he held gave off a little spark of electricity. The orcs, two men and another who I couldn't make out under the heavy armor, had no weapons, but little wands in their hands that throbbed with an eerie blue and gray light. The blood elf wore golden colored plate armor and had a sword as tall as her behind her, the handle sticking up behind her red hair, the sight of which made my blood run cold. The tauren carrying the static box was the first to clear his throat. "Um... hello," came his words in Common, clearly not taking the chance to see if I knew Orcish, which I really _don't_.

It was at that moment that my mind switched to what I was wearing. The Twilight's Hammer, from what Selriona had told me, was still at large. They might think I was a cultist! Fear rooted itself in my mind. My limbs felt numb, and I couldn't find the strength in me to be self conscious of the fact that I was covered in mud, let alone do anything reasonable. I couldn't fight them off; I'd be _destroyed_. "Um... hi?" I squeaked out. With a titanic effort, I managed to move one foot back.

The tauren holding the box turned to the blood elf, standing a good head over her. "Um, Layalith, what's the call here?"

'Layalith' scowled at him. "We have to get this done as soon as possible. It is PRIORITY."

The orc covered in plate armor spoke up, a decidedly masculine voice made faint and hoarse by the armor over him. "She is still a member of the Alliance, should we not - ow!" He stopped talking as the flat end of Layalith's sword came crashing down on his head. "Okay, point taken. I understand." Another step back...

At that precise instant an arc of electricity came out of the box and shocked me. I tasted copper and a vibrating sensation rippled under my skin for an instant before it ended, my teeth clenched together as tightly as I could out of shear instinct. The tauren laughed nervously. "Um, whoops. Yeah, this thing is pretty unstable."

At this, Layalith's scowl deepened. "Are you _done_ being chatty with her? Nil Sag'ma will have our heads if we don't return with these - " At this point she pressed her lips into a thin line, choosing her next words carefully. " - _supplies_ back within the month! Do I need to remind you what he tends to do with those who are late?"

The tauren gently brought a hand to his stomach before tensing as another jolt of electricity surged through him. "Okay, but what about her? She's in the Alliance, so..."

Layalith shook her head. "Priorities are priorities. Now come on, I think I spotted some _prey_ this way. What he wants with these, I don't know. Now come on you useless wastes of space!" she barked out. The tauren was shocked another time, and then the group turned away from me, walking off into the Twilight Highlands and vanishing out of my sight in minutes.

Once they were gone, I allowed myself a long sigh of relief. That... was too close. I had thought for certain I was going to die! Sure, some of the races in the Horde had also been in the Argent Dawn, but these were actual members _of_ the Horde. And whether they had assumed me to be a cultist or not, it wouldn't have ended well. Thank the Light they obviously had better things to do. Shaking my head and returning to my own affairs, I began leading the stag I had just hunted back to my cave, the body slowly hovering up and down as the levitation spell struggled against gravity. I returned to the canyon in between the home of the Twilight Flight and the Vermillion Redoubt, and set it down at the mouth of my home. I didn't have to go far to get firewood, and by the time I got a fire going on the outside of my home to cook the stag and cleaned off the mud on my skin and clothing, it was just past noon.

I hummed to myself as I put out the fire with dirt. Cooking stag always took a few hours, and by the time it was done the sun was setting in the west, framed by the mountains on both side to channel the orange and red light throughout the area. Just as I was about to levitate the cooked meat and bring it into the cave, the whoosh of displaced air filled my ears. I turned around from my home to see a Twilight drake setting down on the ground a few meters from me, dark blue wings seemingly absorbing the light from the sun. The smallest of the three horns along his crest was missing. "Plutolion. What brings you here?"

He shook his head, the slight flap down his neck shaking side to side as he did. "The Prime Consort sent me to tell you that she wishes your presence in her chamber." He sniffed the air, as if something nearby smelled very good. Considering he was only a few wing-beats from a freshly cooked stag, I had an idea about what he smelled. Plutolion shook his head, recollecting his thoughts. "She wishes you to go to her as soon as possible."

I nodded my head, somewhat perplexed at why she hadn't simply contacted me through the link. "Um, all right, thanks. Is there anything else?"

He shook his head, before opening his jaws wide to yawn, razor sharp fangs making me take an unconscious step back before they vanished from my sight once again. "No, that's all. Well, I'm off to hunt." With another blast of wind, Plutolion took off into the air, circling in the sky before headed west towards the Wetlands. Of course, he wouldn't have trouble hunting in the dark.

_'Why didn't you just contact me this way to tell me you wanted to speak with me face to face?' _I thought to Selriona, once again leading the cooked stag into my home.

After a little bit of a silence, I got her response. _'Oooh yeaaah. I can _do_ that._ _I kind of forgot I could do that.'_

I rolled my eyes, then remembered she couldn't see me. She'd used it this morning. _'Yeah, it's a bit hard to get used to that. I still freak out sometimes when you talk to me like this without any warning.'_

_'I agree, it'll take some time to get used to this. Anything happen on your hunt?'_

_'Well, there were a couple of members of the Horde here. From what I gathered, they were hunting something. Must've been pretty important, since they decided not to waste time killing me.'_

I detected a note of worry in Selriona's 'voice'. _'Oh no. Horde, this close?'_

_'Well, they looked pretty damn isolated. Nothing to worry about.'_

A sigh came through the link as I placed the cooked meat into its chamber, before standing in one place. _'Okay, that's good. We don't have the resources to go around convincing the mortals to not kill us on sight. All we need to do is just stay hidden until we have the time.'_

_'So, what did you want to talk to me about?'_

_'Well, I'd rather I told you face to face. I mean, however useful _this _is...'_

_'Yeah, I get it,'_ I said, cutting her off. _'I'm on my way.' _I turned around and headed out, squinting my eyes to see better with night upon me. By the time I reached the path below Grim Batol, night had well and truly descended on me. I carefully climbed, hand over hand, to get to the main entrance to Grim Batol. My shoes scuffed slightly on the smooth stone floors as I walked up to the intimidatingly large gateway, flanked on either side by a drakonid wielding a large spear, crackling with violet flames on the end, crossing it over with their partner's spear to bar entrance. Their eyes followed me carefully as I approached, before I opened my mouth.

"The Prime Consort has requested my presence." They stood still like statues, and I knew what this was. They stubbornly insisted on refusing to let me in unless I showed definitive proof. Whether they really didn't recognize me even after the multiple times I had come here, or they still held a grudge against us 'mortals', I don't know. I held up a hand and let twilight flame cover it, slimy and chilling on my skin, for a brief second, casting flickering shadows around me. They gave me a simultaneous nod, and unlocked their spears to allow me through. "Thank you," I said, walking under them.

Grim Batol was exactly as I remembered it. Light came from a pool of magma far below, which the central spire reached down to touch. The rampart around the spire was patrolled by the occasional group of dragonspawn, and a few late-night drakes flew through the empty spaces. Remembering the time, I yawned, before beginning the process of finding my way down to where Selriona was. I'd been in Grim Batol several times before, but I still got the same feeling of being out-of-place, of wrongness. A fair portion of the Twilight Flight, from what I'd seen, still harbored lingering ill will towards mortals from their time thinking we were evil. Granted, most would not be able to move past such ingrained thoughts quickly. But there wasn't exactly much I could do about it beyond, well, not being evil around them. Something I had very little trouble with.

The stairs down were in fairly good shape, considering all they'd been through. Still, they didn't make me feel any comfort. Cracks riddled the dwarf-sized staircase, and each step I took downward in the twilight flame-illuminated halls seemed like it could have been my last. It was a very long drop to the lava below. My levitation would not save me.

The staircase I took led me only about halfway down to where I needed to be, and after that it took several more minutes of wandering the seemingly endless corridors of Grim Batol to get anywhere, let alone my destination. I passed a room with a few sleeping dragonspawn in it, and at one point there was a drake asleep on the hallway, wings tucked onto his back and tail curled out from under them. His snoring was deafening. Thankfully, he wasn't in my path. I didn't want to imagine what would have happened if I had had to go over him, and accidentally stepped on his tail or wing membranes.

The path to Selriona's chamber was several dozen meters from the pool of molten rock that made of Grim Batol's ultimate 'floor', however it was still far, _far_ closer to the magma than I would have liked. Sweltering heat radiated up from it, making me sweat and wipe my hand, the warm orange light that had replaced the twilight torches echoing along the walls and lulling me closer to sleep. The night was relatively young, but I yawned in spite of it, and fought off sleep. Selriona would _never_ let me live it down if I collapsed out here. Of course, all the eggs were kept close to magma sources for heat. I had no _idea_ how it worked, but apparently whelps in their eggs and for a while after hatching were warm-blooded, and 'switched' over to being cold-blooded after a few weeks. It vaguely reminded me of something my old school teacher had taught my class about salmon, how they switch from being salt-water fish to fresh-water and back.

But even if the whelplings in their eggs were warm-blooded, they still needed an external source of heat, which their cold-blooded parents were hard-pressed to provide. So eggs were kept near the magma pit, as were the whelplings once they hatched. I'd never actually been here before, but I'd heard the directions before. Selriona didn't spend all her time here; sometimes she went to go hunt for them, or take part in various activities that involved solidifying her Flight's position.

Turning around a few more bends, I came to a chamber that I knew from my telepathic conversations was where Selriona's brood resided, and her for a large part of time. A tall and proud doorway, the door having long ago vanished, rose before me, with two twilight flame torches on either side. The orange light from the magma pool didn't project here very well, but the heat did, and drowsiness seemed to ebb and flow from my pores.

Inside, the chamber expanded to a gargantuan size, the roof arcing far above my head, the walls stretching back. Just this chamber alone was the size of the Cathedral of Light, minus the spire. Leave it to the dwarves. What would they possibly have done with all this space?

The occupants of the chamber were very numerous. Several dozen deep-violet whelps fluttered about in groups, talking with each other in high-pitched Draconic, or sleeping on little mats of twigs and leaves. A few of them pitched fireballs across the room, aiming for seemingly invisible targets with limited success. Even fewer stopped what they were doing when I walked in to turn around and look at me. There were a few skeletons scattered about, which I recognized as being the bones of stags. In the middle of the chamber laid a gargantuan violet-scaled dragon, with wings folded closely against her back, the white wings lightly tinted with violet as opposed to the complete dark blue of drakes. Her horns, instead of protruding straight back like that of non-Twilight dragons, curved around to nearly fuse at a single point. The six razor-sharp tusks that I knew to be in the back of her jaws were currently retracted, leaving no indication of their presence, and her tail swayed lightly behind her. A bronze disk with arcane energy flowing along it hung by her neck with a bronze chain.

At my entrance, she raised her head, a smile tugging at her jaw. "Amanthe, you made it. You, um, look a bit, well..."

I yawned, placing my hand over my mouth as Selriona pulled up into a sitting position, wings still tight against her back. "Tired. I swear, this heat is like a glass of warm milk."

"Hmm," said Selriona, her two rear tusks extending with a 'shwing', showing thoughtfulness. "Well, let's try this." With that she reared back, retracted her tusks with another 'shwing', took a deep breath, and blew a narrow stream of ice cold air over me.

"Ah!"

"Awake?"

"I am now!" I said, rubbing my hands over my sides to get some warmth back into my body, which the nearby magma already began very well. "Light, how did you get it so cold?"

"You do _not_ want to know. Really, you do not. So, anyway, there's something I wanted to talk to you about."

I rolled my eyes. "No, did you?"

She chuckled. "Yeah, well. We're pretty well established in Grim Batol now. Things are very well set up, our Sanctum and Shrine are under construction, so that means its time we actually started to carry out our charge. That's why I called you here. I need your help for it."

I smiled. This _was_ part of the reason I was here. "So, exactly what does this entail?"

Selriona frowned. "Okay, don't freak out too much. So, you know about Nalestrasza, right?" I nodded. Selriona had told me about her Red counterpart that lived in her mind, who had the ability to manipulate her dreams and, to some extent, her senses. "Well, for the past few months she's been using shared dreams to set up a, ahem, false identity for you, in, um, don't freak out, Orgrimmar."

My heart skipped a beat. "Wait, what?"

"Well, Nalestrasza thinks it'd be a good idea for you to keep watch for corruption in Orgrimmar. Something about getting you used to being neutral in the Horde-Alliance conflict. I hate to agree with her on anything, but she's right."

I grimaced. "I suddenly hate Nalestrasza a lot more. But..." I groaned, the reality of my situation dawning on me. "She has a point. I do have to learn to be neutral. I'm going to have to deal with members of the Horde sooner or later."

"Amanthe, I'm hardly going to - " Selriona whipped her head around, and following her gaze I saw two whelps engaged in a struggle of some sort. "Farliona, get off your brother. He's not a horse," she said in Draconic. Farliona pouted, but took her claws off of the other whelpling, who twisted around, shrieked, and blasted her with a diminutive fireball. The spit of twilight energy sailed past Farliona, who didn't even have to dodge it. Her victim growled at her, and she just chuckled and began speaking with him quickly in Draconic, too quick for me to make out. They engaged in an angry conversation, and Selriona and I both turned back to each other.

"Aren't they going to hurt each other?"

"Not much, no, nothing I can't easily heal."

I raised an eyebrow at her apparent callousness. "You aren't worried about them?"

She rolled her eyes. "My clutch-mates had a lot worse while Valiona watched over us, and none of us died. Anyway, as I was saying. Amanthe, I'm hardly going to force you to do this."

I shook my head. "No, no. Like I said, I'll have to deal with the Horde sooner or later. May as well be sooner."

Selriona sighed. "I really hope you know what you're getting into. You're going to stay there for a few months, maybe a few years, keeping watch for anything that might signal corruption, arcane, Old God, Demonic, or otherwise. Death - Neltharion's been dead for less than two years. I wouldn't be surprised if the Twilight's Hammer was really, really pissed."

"And what happens if I find anything?"

"Tell me. Right away. Even if you aren't sure it is, better safe than sorry. If it looks minor, take care of it. If it looks like something wide-spread, keep tabs on it until we can get a better idea of what it's doing there. Anything that looks out of place, that seems unnatural, could possibly be a sign."

"All right, and how exactly am I not going to get slaughtered by the Horde?" A slight pressure bloomed in my chest, and I struggled to keep the yawn down. To no avail.

"Ah, I'm glad you asked," she said, smiling. Purple mist surrounded her sitting form, obscuring her from my sight. Her children stopped what they were doing to look at the light-show, a couple ooh-ing and aah-ing. When it stopped, the form she had gone under as 'Selria' stood before me. "Grim Batol is HUGE! Lots of things to find here. And I found _this_," she said, holding up a sphere. It was small enough for her to clench her hands around, violet with the engravings of wyverns and gryphons on it. "An orb of deception. You'll take this, I'll create a portal for you, and use the orb. I've modified it as per Nalestrasza's _nagging_ instructions. You'll turn into a blood elf, and you _should_ get an auto-translator, but the translator may not work one hundred percent of the time. Just keep it on you at all times."

I narrowed my eyes in suspicion at it. "How long would the illusion hold?" I asked. Those things didn't last longer than a few hours, and it took days before it would recharge.

"As long as you need it. Like I said, I've made some modifications."

"So I take this, pretend to be a citizen of the Horde, and keep an eye out for any funny business. Got it."

"That's pretty much the gist of it. Now, you might... want... to..." With that, I felt something come to a rest in my hair.

I froze at the sudden warmth, and sunk into a frown. "Do I want to know?"

"Ialion," she started in Draconic. "Why are you in her hair?"

To my surprise, the voice from above my head spoke in Common. "It sounds like an adventure! Can I go with her, Brood-mother? Please? I like her. She smells nice."

_I WHAT?_

I felt something tug on my hair sharply as a warm, scaly object slid down the side of my face. "Ow!" I turned to look at the hovering whelpling that had been gripping my hair moments before. Ialion looked at Selriona with big, round eyes.

"Ialion, this is very dangerous. You're only a few months old."

He whined. "Pleeease? She can keep me hidden. It sounds fun!"

"Ialion..." Selriona began. "If I let you go, I'll have to let all your sisters and brothers go too."

He shook his head, opening his mouth to show off a fanged grin. "No you don't!" His grin vanished and he settled back to the sad-puppy-is-hungry-face.

Selriona growled, looked at me, then back at her son. "Ialion..." Said Twilight whelp's eyes were getting bigger and rounder by the second. Letting out an exasperated growl, she turned back to me. "Amanthe, do you think you can keep him hidden?"

Ialion leaped at me, grabbing me with his tiny claws and wrapping his wings around my neck. He turned his head back to his mother. "Yay! Thank you! Don't worry, I'll be careful!"

Unsure of what to do, I gently patted the top of Ialion's head. "I think I can keep him hidden. I know a little trick that'll help me get him in." I yawned again, the warm, soothing heat of the nearby molten rock ebbing into my bones. Ialion got off of me and began flapping in the air. He let out a toothy yawn that was more akin to a shriek. He fluttered away and set down a little distance away on a small nest of twigs and leaves, curling up with his wings wrapped around him and going to sleep.

Selriona turned back to me after watching Ialion go to sleep with a small smile on her human form's face. "You sure you can keep him hidden? I mean, the mortal races as a whole aren't exactly too fond of the color violet right about now. If he got discovered, well... you'd have a lot of explaining to do. Any other Flight, and he'd be left alone. But as it stands, he'd be in a _lot_ of trouble."

"Don't worry, I know exactly what to do. I have this little soothing spell to make people less suspicious, and I can hide him in my pack for going into Orgrimmar." _Orgrimmar!_ my inner voice-of-reason screamed at me. _You're going to the capital of the enemy! _I shoved it down.

Selriona nodded to me. "Okay, good." With a flash of violet energy, she returned to her true form. "You might want to get some sleep. You look like all hells."

"I look how I feel, then," I said, suppressing another yawn. "I'll start preparing tomorrow. Sleep now."

She nodded. "All right. Here," she blew another river of icy air over me, shoving the exhaustion out of me. "That should help you get back to your cave. Unless you want to sleep here, of course."

I shook my head. "No, I can make it. Thanks for the offer, though." The irony wasn't lost on me. Only a few years ago, she was sleeping in _my_ home. With that, I turned around and began walking back home. My first mission. I was going to do something to help Azeroth. Legitimately _help_ it.

I couldn't wait.

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><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<br>**


	2. Chapter 2:Portal Lag

**Disclaimer: I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Massive thanks to my beta, Dusty the Umbravita, for finding those embarrassing errors.**

**Chapter published 3/16/12  
><strong>

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><p><span>Amanthe<span>

"Let's see. Backpack, check." I said, placing the large leather pack onto the stone floor of Grim Batol.

"Change of clothes?" I turned my head to look at the pair of dirt-colored clothing on the ground laying over the indigo clothing Selriona had conjured. I currently wore dull brown clothes, to prevent arousing suspicion in Orgrimmar. "Check," I said, packing them away with room to spare.

As several more minutes passed, I took inventory of everything I needed. Water, food, a map of Orgrimmar. Once satisfied, I nodded and stood. I'd been preparing for three days for my journey to Orgrimmar. Needless to say, I was worried. Selriona had told me the Orb of Deception would translate for me, but only most of the time. As for the few moments when it didn't translate, I wasn't looking forward to those. A few passing dragonspawn, swords, axes, or maces alight with Twilight enchantments, briefly glanced into the small alcove where I'd been preparing to go to Orgrimmar for the past three days, but gave me nothing more than that before turning back to their own lives.

Then realization hit me. This was _Orgrimmar _I was going to. The capital of the Horde, who had been my enemies all my life. Those barbaric, ruthless mongrels - neutral, Amanthe. Be neutral. I let out a breath. "This is going to be harder than I thought," I spoke to myself. The time I had spent in the Argent Dawn didn't include being around the Horde. Oh, sure, I'd been around blood elves and trolls there, but they weren't members of the Horde, so I didn't have anything against them. Actual members of the Horde, though...

With everything packed and ready, I hefted the pack up onto my back. I took a step forward, lifting my feet harder with the additional weight. I nullified that with a levitation spell.

"Gravity, I laugh at thee," I whispered, heading back into the corridors of Grim Batol, descending to the chamber where Selriona watched over her whelplings. It was early in the morning, but you couldn't tell that from inside the mountain. Grim Batol in the morning was just as active as in the middle of the day. It was only towards night that the dragonkin began to go to sleep, and could go awake long into the night with sources of perpetual light. As I descended into the bowels of Grim Batol, a feeling of anticipation nestled itself in my gut. Ever since I had drained the oath-stone, it was my duty to help keep Azeroth's corruption in check. Orgrimmar was my first mission. I could do this. And besides, this was the _Horde._ Finding corruption with _them_ was bound to be simple. No, no! There are those thoughts again, Amanthe. You have to be neutral. Especially if you don't want to blow your cover while living amongst them. One slip of the tongue might be all it takes.

I floundered my way down the next staircase, tripping over the small steps and nearly cracking my head on the hard stone floor. Instead I thrust out my hands, scraping them and skidding for a moment before I got my balance back and stood. Calling on the Light, my injured hands, now slightly gray from the dirt on them, glowed a brilliant yellow for a moment before the tiny scrapes closed and the pain faded away. I huffed, repacked my stuff, and resumed my journey with little incident, but not before turning around to look at the stares and bitterly mutter, "Gravity, I laugh at thee."

My eyes stung with smoke as I passed a few forges, the dwarven machines posing no problem for dragons' shapeshifting abilities. A couple of dwarf-formed dragonkin worked at the anvils, hammering red hot pieces of metal as they cooled, and in the corner I could make out several swords and axes, likely ones that had been broken before and needed fixing. I spotted a couple enormous, curved pieces of hollow... iron? Steel? Elementium? I don't know. Razor-tipped cornucopias of metal large enough that they could easily have reached up to my waist. Inside them, I barely made out a few spikes that looked like they could be pulled out. I continued on my path, passing an increasing number of dragonkin as the day crept on, before arriving at my destination.

Selriona stood on all fours in the middle of her chamber, the sweltering heat radiating through it. I thought I spotted Ialion being given reassuring pats on the back by his clutch-mates, and had my suspicions confirmed when he fluttered over to his mother and she told him to be careful. She looked over to me and smiled. "Amanthe, you're here! I'm guessing everything's packed and ready?"

I nodded. "Yes, everything's okay."

"Great," she said, contracting into her pale human form with a dark blue ripple in the air, her short-cut black hair tinged with violet, her eyes holding disturbing dark blue irises. The scar on her back's right side changed to a scar running down her left hand. She reached into her robes and pulled out the Orb of Deception. "Keep this on you at all times. If you lose it, your illusion will just vanish." To prove her point, her form faded to near-invisibility for a moment as she phased in and out of the twilight realm.

A violet streak crashed into my stomach, the shock sending me to the ground. I looked up to find perched Ialion on my chest, grinning at me.

"Ialion, let her up," Selriona scolded him. With a pout, he got off my chest. I pulled myself to my feet, and soon had a twilight whelp fluttering by my side. She tossed the Orb to me, and I caught it in one hand, caressing the golden engravings with my fingers. A gentle hum of magic reverberated into my bones where I touched it.

"Alright, so I just... how do I do this?"

Selriona frowned, and scratched her head for a moment. "Um... okay, try feeding energy into it. That should work."

I fed some of my mana into the little purple-gold orb. Instantly, the changes began. My skin tone changed, becoming slightly paler, the minor tan I had accumulated over my few months here vanishing. My skin tingled as new skin appeared, my ears elongating and increasing the number of nerve endings I had. I looked over myself, somewhat disturbed by seeing the space where I should have been, but was instead occupied by a total stranger.

I ran a finger along my right ear to its tip. "How do I look?"

Selriona squinted her eyes for a moment, then nodded. "Like this." An indigo whirl appeared at her feet, rising up along her body and leaving profound changes where it passed, no doubt in replication of my own form. Her clothing was a dull brown, like my own, with her hair a red-tinted blonde. For a moment her eyes remained a deep blue before stabilizing, becoming a simple, steel gray. Overall, as far as blood elves went, it didn't look too bad.

I nodded, my face contorted into a frown, but still conveyed approval. "Not bad." I spread my hands from my body and twisted around to look at myself from all angles, still holding the Orb in one hand. Out of the corner of my eye, a blue shimmer signaled Selriona returning to a human form. "All right, so, how exactly is this going to work? I just walk into Orgrimmar, and... what?"

"Well, Nalestrasza set up your home in the Valley of Wisdom." She reached into her robes and pulled out a sheet of paper. "Okay, so, your name is going to be, and this is what Nalestrasza set up, not me, 'Amanthe Gnirevis'."

I raised an eyebrow as Ialion set down to sit on my feet. "At least I still have my name. And isn't that just my last name backwards?"

She shrugged. "Well, it's not exactly like they'll be looking through _Alliance_ records for your name." She looked back at the paper. "Honestly, Nalestrasza?" she mumbled. "Couldn't you be more creative?" She shook her head, no doubt clearing the thought. "All right, so, you'll go to the Valley of Wisdom, and I'll give you directions from there. Your job is apparently to help some 'Seer Liwatha' with healing. She's a priestess like you, and a tauren. Of course, that 'job' is just a cover. She knows you're coming, but not who you are."

I narrowed my eyes. Something about this sounded a little_ too_ easy. "And how exactly did Nalestrasza do all of this?"

Selriona shivered. "That's the part that scares me, too. I don't _know_ how she does it. Whatever she's truly capable of, she holds out on me."

I felt something pawing at my leg. Looking down, I saw Ialion looking up at me. "Are we going? I can't _wait_ to go!" He thrust his wings down and flew up to my eye level, looking between me and his mother.

I sighed, reaching out to pat him on the head. "We're going, Ialion. Don't worry."

Selriona looked at me. "He's going to have to hide in your pack. Do you have air holes for him?" she said with a note of worry in her voice.

I nearly smacked myself. "I'm such an idiot!" I slung the pack over my head, placed it on the ground, and began stabbing at the thin fabric with my fingers, opening up a series of gaps in it. Once done, I held it up, showing it to her. "Is this enough for him?"

She nodded. "Yeah, that's enough. Okay, Ialion, remember," she said, turning to her son, who still fluttered in between her and I. "You can't be seen. It doesn't matter if they think you're her pet or not, our Flight is trying as hard as possible to stay hidden. So we can't give them any direction _at all_. It doesn't matter how small the hint is, we cannot allow them to find us. We aren't ready to explain to everyone just yet."

"Okay, Broodmother," he said cheerfully.

"Ialion, I mean it," she said in a strict tone. "If you're discovered, they are likely to kill you. Even if they don't, it will be a lot of trouble for you." With a swirl of violet, she returned to her true form and brought her head down to Ialion, her tusks half-unsheathed in concern.

He nodded, and gently fluttered forward and rubbed his snout against hers. "I'll be careful, Broodmother."

They pulled away, and several of his siblings gathered around him, patting him on the back and chattering in Draconic. However, as I held the Orb of Deception, the Draconic words translated themselves in my mind, so I understood their meanings even as the words themselves escaped me.

"Don't envy you - "

"Have fun!"

"Be careful."

" - so much better here!"

Watching him surrounded by his siblings made me feel like I was forgetting something, something important. It was right on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Oh well. It could wait. When they had all said their goodbyes, Ialion fluttered to me and gave me a fanged smile. "All right. Can we go? Can we go?"

I chuckled and patted his head, looking up at Selriona, whose tusks had retreated into her skull. "All right, so Ialion hides in the bag."

She nodded. "Make sure you put the Orb of Deception there, too. If they find _that_, well..."

She didn't need to finish that thought. "Yeah, I get it." I took the Orb and placed it in the bottom of my pack, below all the items I had packed, then looked up at the eager Ialion, clenching his claws around air in impatience. "Okay Ialion, whenever you're read - " Before I could finish he had zipped into the bag and curled around, nostrils near the air-holes." - y." I glanced down at him, and gave him a gentle smile, before slowly closing over the flap. "Make sure you don't move, Ialion. We don't want them to think you're there." A small shuffle in the pack, followed by stillness, was all the answer I got before I gingerly placed it over my shoulders.

Selriona's mouth was strained, and her pupils slitted slightly more than usual. "Good luck, Amanthe. Please, take care of him."

I walked over to her and patted her forelegs. "Don't worry, I will. Should I take him out to hunt now and then?"

Above me, she shook her head. "No, no, he's not strong enough right now. He's still a whelpling. When he's a whelp, and if you're still in Orgrimmar, you probably should take him out to hunt. But, uh, let's get there first, right?" I stepped away from her as she slightly opened her mouth, frothing dark blue energy spilling out of her maw. All at once, the energy vanished and entered the chain of her capacitor, flowing down to the disk. It shot out a beam of arcane energy and opened a portal, through which I saw a vast red desert. The arcane disk around her neck branched out violet-silver tendrils into the air, slowly recharging its store of arcane energies. "Contact me once you're in the city. I'll guide you."

I nodded. "Got it." With that, I jumped in the portal. For a moment, whirling arcane energy surrounded me, tugging me through as streams of energy washed over my skin. Then it ended, and my feet contacted soft sand. My eyesight wobbled a bit, before steadying. All around me was reddish-ground, with night having recently fallen on the continent of Kalimdor.

Portal lag was going to be a terror.

Turning around, I saw the portal back to Grim Batol close with a _crack. _Ialion shuffled in my pack, a little whine coming out of it. "It's all right, Ialion. That was just a portal. It's normal for it to feel like that." I remembered the first time I went through a portal, the nausea, the sickening churning in my stomach. "Now... where to go." Spinning around, I quickly found that I was, in fact, standing on a road of some sort, paler than the red stone, sand and dust in all directions. And looking up along the path, I soon found the massive spiked, armored gates of Orgrimmar in the distance.

"Well... no sense waiting around." Moving my feet towards the distant fortress of a city, I briefly checked myself to make sure my illusion still held. It did, and I breathed a sigh of relief, continuing onwards to the mammoth city walls. As the time passed and the gates loomed closer and closer, taller and taller, a myriad of thoughts ran through my mind.

_This is suicide._

_Monstrous, sinister wretches._

_Be neutral, Amanthe._

_What if I get caught?_

_I can keep watch. I can _do_ this._

I didn't even notice when I'd walked up to the gates and was stopped by a tauren in red plate armor, the insignia of the Horde on her chest. "Halt!" I heard her say, the Orcish word flying over my head but the translation making itself known in my head. "Who are you?"

I suppressed my fear and hatred at the sight of a tauren and, remembering the name Selriona had told me I'd go by, I replied. "Amanthe Gnirevis, I have - " My tongue tied itself over at that. Just saying 'I have' proved difficult, the Orb of Deception's translation magic making me think the words in Common, but nonetheless they came out in Orcish, which then translated itself in my mind. I swallowed, and tried again, stumbling over the sounds as I spoke unfamiliar words. "I have a home - a home here, if I'm - I'm not mistaken," I said, casting a subtle spell to soothe her mind. I felt Ialion shuffle slightly in my pack, but not enough to be noticeable... hopefully.

The guard placed a gauntlet on her chin, and considered this for a moment. "All right, fair enough. You can pass."

"Thank y - Thank you," I said, hurrying past the guards. The tunnel soon opened up into a colossal courtyard, the red stone making walls of Orgrimmar looking like it had been carved into a mountain at some places. A few members of different races bustled about in the night, and the massive keep that I knew from my map to be Garrosh's stronghold dominated the valley, drawing my eyes to it, no doubt the effect the Warchief wanted to achieve. _'All right, I'm in. Now where?'_

Selriona's voice came into my mind, along with a pressure above my ear. _'Right, so, um, you just came out __of the tunnel in the gate, right?'_

I nodded, then remembered she couldn't see me. _'Yep.'_ People were beginning to stare, so I began walking forward, acting as natural as I could.

_'Follow the road, take the first left.' _I did so, and told her that. _'All right. You'll come to an intersection. Go left, and where you would go into the Valley of Spirits, I told you about that, go right towards the Valley of Wisdom.'_ A few minutes of walking got me there. I made the appropriate turns, making note of how the number of goblins and trolls increased as I got closer to the Valley of Spirits, and as I got closer to what I assumed to be the Valley of Wisdom, with several places of the land sunken into lakes, I saw increasing numbers of tauren.

_'All right, I'm in the Valley of Wisdom. At least, I think I am. There's a lot of tauren around for this time of day, anyhow.'_

_'Yep, that's it. That Valley is the tauren district. Your home should be next to the inn, one spot to the left. It may have been some store or another before, but according to Nalestrasza, it's recently been vacated.'_

_'I'd hate to have her as an enemy.'_

_'You and me both, Amanthe. You and me both. Is Ialion okay?'_

As if on cue, the whelpling shuffled slightly in my pack. _'He's fine. Keeping very still, too.'_

A sigh of relief came through the link. _'Good, thank you. Let me know if anything happens. For now, you'll just move in, and try to sleep.'_

_'Damn portal lag.'_

_'Yeah. So anyway, keep an eye out for anything suspicious. And please, keep Ialion safe.'_

I smiled lightly at her worry. _'I will, don't worry.' _With that, the pressure on my head faded as the link's use stopped.

Walking through the streets of Orgrimmar was nothing if not nerve-wracking. None of the night-folk spared me so much as a second glance as I nervously, almost shaking, tip-toed under the starry sky, the disk of the White Lady currently taking on a bloody red hue, the Blue Child nowhere to be found. However, every time an orc's eyes briefly shifted to me, or a goblin looked up from their work as I passed by, I felt a cold spell of terror rush through my heart, every muscle in my body screaming at me to either _turn around and_ _run_ or _kill those __filthy savages for all they have done to the Alliance. _My eyes flew quickly over every thing I could see, anything not covered by the blanket of darkness, anything revealed by torchlight, taking in every detail, anything that might hurt me. Rationally, I knew I was being absurd. To them, I was just another blood elf. But after being their foes for all my life, well...

I soon came to the inn, made obvious by the multiple items of food inside. Right next to it sat a small hut, but in spite of the size, the wooden door was more than tall enough for me to enter. Closing and locking the door behind me with the key I found just inside, I looked around the house. It was of fair size, with a few shelves and tables, with a chest tucked in the corner, lit by torches, with another passage that led to several other rooms. Checking that nobody could get in, I gently took the pack off of me and set it down.

"Okay Ialion, you can come out," I said, opening it. Ialion looked up at me with bored eyes. Crawling out of the bag, he flexed his wings a few times before taking off into a hover.

"I feel stiff," he said in Draconic, twisting his head around, no doubt relieving a crick in it. "I don't like feeling stiff."

"Well, I'm not surprised. You stayed in one spot for quite a while."

He looked around, blinking his eyes, which then widened as they saw something. He streaked towards the empty bookshelf, landing on the uppermost enclosure. He began raking his claws at it, collected the wood shavings, and made a little nest in the shelf. He sighed and nestled down on it, looking out at me with his head on the wood, wings lying limply to his sides. "I like it here. This is comfortable. So, what are we doing next, um...?"

"Amanthe."

"Oh, right. What are we doing now, Amanthe?"

"Well, right now we need to go to sleep." There was no way nobody woke up to the whine Ialion gave out. "I know, but we've got portal lag. It's night here. We need to adjust sooner or later."

Ialion growled, and pouted, raising his head and slamming it down for emphasis. "_Fine_." The Twilight whelpling closed his eyes, and began to deepen his breathing. In the meantime, I looked around the place that was to be my home for anywhere from months to years. The closed shelves, upon opening them, had food in them, preserved meats and grains, fruits permanently chilled with magic. Stumbling on the chairs next to the table and opening the wooden chest in the corner of the room, I found that it was filled with several dozen gold pieces. I narrowed my eyes. This seemed strange. It was as if I'd already been living here for a few months. How had Selriona's Red self set this all up? I knew it had something to do with shared dreams, but still!

My illusion rippled and began to fade. Panicked, I snatched the Orb of Deception from my belongings, the form of a blood elf strengthening the moment I held it in my hands.

Exploring the rest of my room, I found that it also held a place to bathe, in addition to a bedroom. The bed, while it looked soft enough, did not appear to be the least bit inviting. Still, I needed to get rid of my portal lag, and the only way to do that was to sleep. Blowing out the nearest light, I laid down in the bed, tracing a finger over my new, outrageously long ears, and after what seemed like hours of tossing and turning, fell asleep.

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><p><em>KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK!<em>

I bolted upright at the sound, something rolling out of my hands, and briefly wondered why the stone of my cavern had turned to wood before I remembered my situation. A shrill shriek filled the air, and I bolted out of my bed to find Ialion haphazardly flying in every which way around the room he was in, dark blue scales reflecting the light of the few torches alight. "_Ialion_!" I hissed to him, catching his attention, and making him crash into a wall. Ducking back into my bedroom, I clasped the Orb tightly to prevent my form from returning to my natural one.

_KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK!_ "Go into the bedroom! _Now!_" He didn't need to be told twice. Before I could blink twice, he had disappeared around the bend.

_KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK! _"Coming!" I yelled after the visitor, tucking the Orb out of sight into my pocket, moving my way to the door and opening it, sunlight pouring in unabated. On the other side stood two tauren, a female with white fur spotted with brown, wearing light red and green clothes for the springtime weather. Her two ivory horns went out to the sides, and their points, while dull, still made me shy away. Her friend, standing a head over her and nearly two over me, had black, rugged fur. He was well muscled, suggesting that he had some physically strenuous occupation here. He wore the same clothing the other tauren did, but sized for him, and his black horns came out from the sides of his head and pointed forward, their points a lot sharper than hers.

She spoke first. "Hi, are you the new resident?" she asked, extending a hand to shake mine.

I fought down my revulsion and shook it, trying my best to bury my scowl under a smile. "Yeah, I am. I'm guessing you're my neighbors?"

The _bull_ nodded, before speaking in a deep, baritone voice. "Indeed. We live two spaces to the left of you. My name is Breorn, this is my mate, Saltio. It is a pleasure...?"

"Amanthe," I said, also shaking his now extended hand. "I'll be a working with Seer Liwatha, as a healer." I held up a hand and briefly called upon the Light, creating a minor flow of light over it. Just that small effort made exhaustion crash over me like a tidal wave, in spite of the sleep I just had. I wavered on my feet before falling over, catching myself with a frantic levitation spell, easily the most useful spell to have ever been discovered. Spinning about in the air, I shortly righted myself before removing the enchantment from myself, dropping to the ground, yawning.

Saltio grimaced. "Are you all right?"

"I took a portal from the Eastern Kingdoms." True enough. "Portal lag."

Breorn nodded. "Yes, that is unfortunate. Why don't you come with us? My shift isn't until the afternoon, I'll buy you some coffee at the inn right here. It's on me."

I wanted to resist. I wanted to protest. I didn't need a member of the _Horde_ to buy me coffee. But I reminded myself that I needed to learn to be neutral, and being hostile would not help me in that regards. Besides, the mere mention of coffee made my willpower crumble entirely, the phantom scent wafting into my nose. "Thank you. Just give me a moment, I need to get ready." And I needed to tell Ialion, not to mention put out a breakfast for him. I figured that, on one hand, he wouldn't want to be cooped up in this house the entire time, but on the other hand, he had been cooped up in a single chamber all his short life.

I closed the door in their faces a _little_ louder than I needed, and got a slab of bacon from the shelves, as well as pouring some water from the jug into a cup, both also from the shelves, and carried it into my bedroom, where Ialion had taken to the bed and pulled the covers over his little form.

"Ialion." His scaly head peeked out from the covers. I could see the small indent in the covers moving, indicating his tail wagging back and forth. "I'm going to go get myself settled in." I placed the food and water on a small slab of wood holding a currently extinguished torch. "I'll be back later. Do _not_ leave this house. If anyone other than me comes in, hide. If you want to leave, then I'll be with you so I can maybe, _maybe, _pass you off as a pet." He hissed at this. "I know, but would you rather stay here for months?" His eyes avoiding mine answered this question well enough. "Okay, be careful. I'll be back soon."

He nodded, pulling himself out from underneath the sheets. "Okay Amanthe. I'll be good." He sat down on top of the bedsheets, an innocent smile on his snout.

I nodded. "Okay, thanks. I'd hate to tell your mother you got yourself killed." As I turned around, I heard the sound of cooked meat being torn by fangs behind me. Opening the door back up, Saltio and Breorn were in largely the same spots as before, but slightly backed up, with Breorn infront of Saltio instead of how they'd arrived.

Oh Gods. Was I really neighbors with _tauren?_

In no time at all, Breorn and Saltio led me to the inn, where they purchased a cup of coffee for me, in addition to a few eggs for all three of us. We sat down at one of the many tables in the inn, a few others occupied. A Forsaken sat at the far end. The smell... ugh. The eggs, however, I couldn't find it in me to be revolted at. The food of the Horde was, to my surprise (Be neutral, Amanthe!) neither better nor worse than the eggs I had eaten in Stormwind. Somewhat chewier, though. For a while we ate in silence, before I decided to stir up a conversation with the two tauren, in order to help get myself acclimated.

Besides, it would do well for me to have friends here. "So, what do you two do here for a living?"

"Well, I am on the city guard," Breorn responded, swallowing the coffee in his mouth. "My shift is on the afternoons, so we won't be seeing each other much then." I don't intend to see you much at all.

I turned to Saltio, who was busy scarfing down the eggs. She stopped, swallowed what was in her mouth, and spoke. "Well, I work at Yetmak's Alchemy and Potions, over in the Drag. I keep inventory there. In fact, I think my shift starts soon," she explained, looking at the mechanical clock within the building. She gulped down the rest of her food before my eyes, and got up. "I'll see you later." She kissed Breorn, making the hair on the back of my neck bristle. _Neutral,_ Amanthe. Then she left, placing down some silver coins at the Innkeeper's desk before departing.

Alone with Breorn, I suddenly got the paranoid feeling Ialion was in trouble. I knew I was being absurd, but couldn't help it. I took another sip of the coffee to take my mind off of it, the black coffee's sharp, bitter taste helping to shake off my drowsiness. It was night over on the Eastern Kingdoms right now...

"So, you're working for Seer Liwatha?" Breorn asked, breaking the silence. "She's a priestess, you know. Helps tend to the wounded, from whatever reasons. Wars, duels, clumsy accidents, all sorts of things."

I nodded. "Yes, I am. I _told _you, I think. I'm a priestess myself."

"I figured that out when you levitated yourself after you nearly keeled over, not to mention when you called on the Light back there." My cheeks burned. Way to go, Captain Obvious. "Ah, well. You should probably go meet her soon, if you're going to be helping her out. She's not too far away."

At this, I felt a little pressure above my ears. _'Amanthe, are you awake?'_

_'I am.' _Breorn continued. "So, what did you do before you came here to Orgrimmar?"

_'How's Ialion? Is he all right?'_

I hesitated, before responding to Breorn first. "Oh, not much, not much. I actually didn't have an occupation just before I came here." _'He's fine,__'_ I told her, not knowing if that was true, cursing myself for not having the sense to not leave him alone. _'But this isn't a good time. I'm talking with someone right now.'_

_'Oh, okay. Let me know when it's a good time.'_

_'Just a moment,'_ I told her. "Thanks for the breakfast, Breorn," I said, drinking the last of the coffee from the cup. "But I really do need to be going."

The tauren nodded. "Very well. Take care. Twilight's Hammer activity is nowhere near as high as it was during the Cataclysm, but they're still out and about."

I nodded, standing up from the table and leaving Breorn all alone, headed back to my home to check up on Ialion. A lead, but it was one that Selriona and I already suspected. Still, it was nice to have it confirmed. The cultists had not yet gone into complete hiding. There was stuff to watch out for. Once I was out of the inn and could focus my mind, I contacted Selriona.

_'Alright, Selriona. I can talk with you now, there's no one else to distract me.'_

_'Okay good. Are you all settled in? Everything good?'_

_'It's good. I'm neighbors with two _tauren_, but other than that, it's good. I'm going to go check in with Seer Liwatha soon.'_ I stepped inside my new house and locked the door behind me, fingering the Orb of Deception in my pocket. "Ialion!" When I heard no response, I got a rush of paranoia. Oh-Light-what-had-happened-this-was-all-my -

Stepping into my bedroom, I saw the meat and water gone, and a small scaled body on the bedsheets, eyes closed, breathing slowly and deeply, the telltale signs of sleep."Oh noooo, no you don't. Wake up. Up, up, up!" I said, shaking Ialion's wings from side to side to awaken the dozing dragon. His poisonous green eyes opened, and he yawned, the yawn turning into a shriek as his mouth opened all the way. Ialion pulled himself into a sitting position.

We eyed each other, before he spoke. "Why did you wake me up?" he asked in a disappointed voice, as if he had expected better of me.

"You can't go to sleep in the day. You'll never adjust otherwise." _'I just caught Ialion sleeping. He can't do that in the day, right? Or is he young enough?'_ It dawned on me just then how woefully unprepared I was to take care of Ialion. We should've just not allowed him to come along.

_'No, he can't. Our metabolisms work a bit differently. He needs roughly nine hours of sleep, but only at night.__ Right, so, um, anyway. Are you settled in? Already asked that, um... how's Ialion?'_

_'He's good, but I can tell already he's going to have a hard time getting rid of the lag. Little bit of a problem here: I need to go check in with Seer Liwatha, but I'm afraid to leave Ialion alone.'_ I didn't add 'again'. What Selriona didn't know...

A dull _hmm_ resonated in my thoughts. _'Tell Ialion that if he ever __leaves without you, that I will personally fly over there to have a little _discussion_ with him__.' _I relayed the rather ominous message, watching Ialion shuffle nervously on his rump. I knew well enough what Selriona meant. The times my mother had to give me a good scolding when I was a toddler, I'd have the fear of death in me. I think I had wet myself that one time I had nearly burned the house down through an incident involving grasshoppers, mud, and an oven.

"Okay. Ialion, I'm going to go check in with Seer Liwatha. I don't know how long it'll be, so you know where the food is, _right_?"

Still fearful of his mother coming over to yell at him, he nodded his trembling head. "Y-yes."

"Good. Hey, I'll be back as soon as I can, okay?" I said, kneeling on the bed to pat him on the head. I turned around, preparing to find Seer Liwatha. Once in the doorway, I turned back around. "Take care. _And no sleeping!_"

_'Again, good luck, Amanthe.'_

_'Thanks. I have a feeling I'll need all the good luck I can get here.'_

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><p><strong> Review, let me know what you think.<strong>


	3. Chapter 3:Tainted Wings

**Disclaimer: I do not ****own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Like always, massive thanks to my beta Dusty the Umbravita.**

**Chapter published 3/24/12**

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><p><span>Ama<span>nthe

Stepping outside of my house yet again, the streets were a lot more crowded than before, scores of people rushing about to and fro. I quickly checked my illusion, and satisfied that I wouldn't be killed on the spot, I set out to look for Seer Liwatha. I couldn't stop myself from tightening my muscles, ready to bolt at the slightest movement in my direction. Then it hit me that I had no idea where she was.

_'Hey, do you know where Seer Liwatha is?'_

_'Um... no. Sorry. Just that she's in the Valley of Wisdom.'_

I frowned. _'Oh, okay. Thanks anyway.'_

_'Maybe you could try asking someone?'_

I placed a hand on my chin, not caring that nobody around me knew why I did so. _'Maybe. All right, yeah, I'll do that.'_

Cramming my anxiety into a little hole in the back of my mind, I approached an orc guard. "Excuse me, do you know where I may find Seer Liwatha?"

He turned his head towards me. "As a matter of fact, I do. She was recently headed over to the pond," he said, pointing a gauntlet over to the small pond area in the Valley. "Are you the new employee that she's been awaiting?"

How_ had_ Liwatha known? Selriona mentioned she had expected me. Then I nearly smacked myself. Of course. She _was_ a Seer. I nodded. "Yes, I am. Do you know how I can identify her?"

"She has dark gray fur and lighter horns. If you need more help, ask around closer to the area; I can't tell anymore from here."

I smiled. That went better than I thought it would. "Thank you," I stated, turning around, and headed down to the little pond. As I approached, it became deathly silent. I saw the reason why; several people held fishing rods tossed out into the water. As I approached, a Troll reeled in his line, pulling out a flapping, yellow/red fish. Peering in closely, I saw slight ripples on the surface of the pond that could have been either the wind or fish below, and a couple of life-forms, colored gray through the water's distortion, swam haphazardly, without thought or plans. For a moment they seemed to hold me in a trance, occasionally flitting out of my sight, leaving me to find another one to carve a hole through with my gaze until it too vanished. Then I remembered I had somewhere to go.

I scanned my eyes over the crowd around the pond, searching for the Seer. It was difficult, with the distraction of other Tauren passing by, making my eyes dash to them, realize my error, and lose whatever train of thought I had prior. After some walking around the perimeter of the pond, I caught sight of a Tauren that seemed to fit the bill; dark gray fur, light gray horns. She wore a brown robe with blue and yellow woven into a pattern near her waist. She carelessly walked towards a row of buildings, likely to buy something, or to visit. Ducking in between the people around and struggling not to cringe away from them in fear, I walked up to her.

"Seer Liwatha?"

She turned around to look at me. "Yes? How may I help you?" Her voice was aged, and cracked a little here and there. "Do I know you?"

I shook my head. "I don't think so. I'm Amanthe, I'm here to help you with healing the injured?"

Her bright, near yellow hazel eyes suddenly took on a gleam. "Ah, yes! I've known you were coming, so I helped prepare your home. I trust it is satisfactory?"

I thought about Ialion, bored out of his mind in my house, but not daring to leave for fear of Selriona's scolding. How torn apart would the house be when I got back?

I nodded my head. "Yes, it's very nice, thank you. How did you know I was coming?"

"For the past few months, I have been receiving visions about a blood elf's arrival, that she was to help me in my clinic." She smiled. "And here you are."

I narrowed my eyes. "Visions? Would you mind detailing them?" I asked, having a suspicion.

"Well, they were not so much as visions so much as recurring dreams. You are a priestess, yes? You must know the importance of following the visions given to us by An'she." _The Light. It's called the Light!_ I hissed at her mentally.

"These dreams always started the same way, with me in a vast plain surrounded by signs, each with the words 'You are dreaming' on them. Once I figured it out, they vanished, and I saw my clinic, with me and a blood elf woman helping me out. Sometimes her details changed; Red hair, blonde hair, gray eyes, blue eyes, and so on. But she always had the Light of An'she illuminating her hands."

I rubbed my chin. The field full of signs telling her she's dreaming... "After that, for a moment I saw nothing but smooth, even red scales filling my sight, and then I saw the home you currently occupy, but empty and decrepit. I received these visions for a while before I deciphered their meaning; help you get moved in to your home. I assume you already had plans as to where to move in, yes?"

Well, that settled how Nalestrasza did it. "yes, actually. The visions explain a lot. So, you run a clinic?"

She nodded. "Indeed. I set it up after the fall of the Destroyer. Lately the people coming in have had more severe injuries, so I could use an extra hand."

I nodded to her. "Okay. So, when do I start?"

"Well, I was just on my way over there now. Please, accompany me." I did so, and she continued her walk towards the buildings, but abruptly changed direction and headed east, the sun glaring into our eyes. Soon enough, as the Valley of Wisdom began to shrink into a narrow, darker pass, the Seer turned to her right and stopped next to a building with a bright yellow curtain for a door and a vague rune etched into the wall above it. What language it was, I couldn't make it out consciously, however the Orb of Deception spoke in my mind that it was the Orcish symbol for healing.

Liwatha turned to me and spoke, but I didn't understand any of the Orcish words flying past my ears. I reached my hand into my pocket and tapped the Orb, and after a few seconds I could understand her again. " - all right?"

I smiled nervously. "Um, could you run that by me again?"

She sighed. "I have a few patients currently. I need to go tend to the ones with the most severe injuries; I've not just been receiving more heavily injured people, but there've been slightly more coming in recently. Follow me, I'll show you who to help inside, all right?"

"Oh, yes, okay." I quickly checked myself over, and much to my relief, the illusion of a blood elf still held firm. Seer Liwatha turned into the clinic, and I followed behind her, pushing the curtain out of my way to enter.

Inside were a few cots pushed to the sides, along with chairs that a few patients sat on, waiting patiently for their turn. A couple shelves lined the walls, torches hanging off of them, with dozens of containers of various pastes and liquids in them. I couldn't help but feel a bit happy that these members of the Horde were in physical pain, but I forced the feeling down, trying my hardest to be neutral. There was one troll that laid on his back on a bed, skin a pale blue, tusks chipped at the ends, his vacant eyes looking straight up, lips moving as he mumbled something indistinguishable.

I got Liwatha's attention. "What's wrong with him?"

She frowned. "He just showed up yesterday. He had severe shadow magic burns, many tiny bites along his skin, like he had been attacked by a swarm of insects, as well as claw marks. He has been catatonic since. I've healed the injuries, yet I can't seem to soothe his mind. Perhaps you can?"

I knew just the spell. "I... could give it a shot," I said, still holding reservations about _helping_ a troll.

"You have my thanks." She walked to the back of the room, into a small alcove, and came back with a flaky green solid in a jar. "You might try this. It's what I've been trying to use, but it hasn't been working very well. I don't know of any spells An'she gives us to soothe one's mind." I did. It wasn't part of regular training, though. It was a spell you had to learn in secret while learning the power of shadow. I had used it to get into the city.

"I can handle this, Seer."

She nodded, handing me the paste. "Excellent. I will be tending to the other patients if you need anything."

"Okay, thanks." With that, the Seer turned away, and I approached the patient, still muttering. Once I got closer, I could make out what he whispered.

"So many, tiny nipping, shadow, green light, leader green eyes, horrible, claws and wings." I took an unconscious step back, then back in, preparing to use the soothing spell. "Nightmares, sleeping nightmares, tainted wings with green eyes, little nipping, biting and swarming shadows."

I frowned. This man was utterly insane. What else did I expect from a troll? No, shut up, me.

I sent the spell at him, observing as a tiny shadow briefly clouded his eyes. "Insects, tiny nipping green eyes and tainted wings, soaring above. Nightmares, nightmares from the claws, sleeping in nightmares, corrupted claws, terrible-awful-horrible." He lurched all at once. "Nil!" I frowned, tapped my Orb to make sure it worked, and cast the spell again, placing more of my mana into the spell to increase its effect. His eyes almost entirely blacked over for a moment, and then his mumbling continued, but slowed down drastically.

"Leader, he's their leader, and his wings are tainted and eyes are green and where he strides little nipping and biting shadows run infront of him and nightmares fall from his corrupted claws."

I growled in irritation and cast it again. This time, he stopped talking entirely, his eyes focused, and he placed a hand to his head. "Where am I?"

"You're in Seer Liwatha's clinic. You were babbling a bunch of crazy-talk. Any particular reason?"

He sat up. "Ah, no, I don't remember." He narrowed his eyes at me, as if noticing something off about me, and broke into a grin. "I'm guessing ya cured me? Thanks, mon." He swung his legs off the bed and then stood, me clearing away, not wishing to be any closer than I absolutely had to be. "Give Seer Liwatha my regards, um...?"

"Amanthe."

"Gotcha, mon. I'll be see'in ya 'round." Before I could do anything else, he swept out of the clinic. For a moment I just stood there, thinking over the things he had said that were more than a _little_ ominous.

_'Um, Selriona?' _I asked her.

_'Yeah?'_

_'Remember how you told me to contact you if I see anything even a BIT suspicious?'_

_'Oh, wow, already?'_ Her voice carried a note of surprise in it.

_'Yeah. I was with Seer Liwatha, in her clinic, and one of her patients was a troll, but he was just laying on his back talking about tainted wings, nightmares, and something 'nipping and biting'. So I used some mind soothes to heal him, next thing I know, he's right as rain. Any clue what that was all about?'_

_'Hmm. So he was crazy, and then he was right as rain after you just soothed him? Sounds an awful lot like mental trauma. What could have caused one like that? So, wait, what was the troll ranting about again?'_

_'Nightmares, shadows, corrupted claws, tainted wings, green eyes, green light, nipping and biting.'_

_'Hmm. That doesn't exactly sound too reassuring, but we don't know enough. He might have just gone crazy.'_

_'That's not all. Seer Liwatha told me that when he first arrived, he had burns from shadow magic, claw marks, and bites on him like he'd been attacked by a hive of flesh-eating locusts.'_

_'Okay, so that definitely fits the bill with what he was ranting about, but, eh, ah, I don't know. Amanthe, when you're back at your home I'll start teaching you how to enter the Twilight realm. It'll help you see any corruption clear as day.'_

The concept of entering the Twilight realm was rather disturbing for me to think about. It was a harsh landscape. Even the Twilight Flight didn't live there indefinitely, since there was absolutely _no_ food there. From what I'd been told, it sounded like a cold, dark, unforgiving place. _'I thought only your Flight could see corruption there.'_

_'Weeell, it's one of the perks of your oathstone. All right, so, finish up with Liwatha, then go back to your home. I'll teach you from there.'_

I nodded, making one of the patients look at me curiously. I realized with a blush that to them I'd been standing in one place, utterly motionless. I give the goblin a nervous smile. She huffed and leaned back in her chair, holding her left arm with her right. _'Okay, got it.'_ With that, we stopped using the link.

For the next few hours, I helped Liwatha treat the patients, recalling my training in the Cathedral with medicine, being preached to that magic would only get one so far. The goblin had tendonitis in her arm apparently, which Liwatha gave me an herbal treatment to give to her, the least severe injury of all the patients. An orc had a broken arm, which took our combined magic to heal enough so that it would fix itself. The day slowly carried on, the Orb occasionally stopping its translation until I tapped it several times to get it to work again. I found myself wondering about Ialion, bored out of his mind in the house. If he had fallen asleep _again_...

"Thank you, Amanthe. You've been a great help for me. Here," said Liwatha, briefly vanishing into the back of the clinic with a flourish that seemed like it would have been beyond her age. She reappeared with a few pieces of gold. "Take these. I'll expect you back here tomorrow at noon."

I nodded to her. "Thank... you," I forced out, taking the compressed disks of metal from her. "See you tomorrow." With that, I hurried out of the clinic, pushing past the curtain in the doorway, and jogged back to my house, ignoring the people in my way and discrediting the afternoon sun's harsh rays. Hunger lightly clawed at the inside of my stomach, urging me back. Within minutes, I found myself locking the door behind me and, while my back was turned, I was tackled by something warm and scaly that wrapped its purple-indigo wings around my head, obscuring my vision as tiny claws dug into my shoulders.

I froze as Ialion's voice began chirping to me. "You're back! I was sooo bored here! There's nothing to do!"

I reached my hands around to grip Ialion's sides. "Ialion, as nice as it is to see you, your wing talons are ripping out my hair!"

"Ooh, sorry Amanthe!" He let go of me, allowing me to turn around without taking him on a joyride. "So? So? What was it like? What did you do?" He gave out a large, shrieking yawn.

I chuckled and scratched the top of his head, making him give off soft purrs as his wings fluttered spasmodically, making him occasionally dip in the air before he caught himself and regained stability for a moment. "Not much, I just helped out a tauren with her patients. Nothing too exciting." I let go of Ialion and walked over to the chest, placing Liwatha's payment into it.

The whelpling flew over to the table and sat on it, looking over at me. "So? So? What are we doing next? I already ate lunch. I left some for you," he said, pointing his snout towards some fruit and bread over on the far side of the table. The apples seemed to have talon marks in them. Gee, I wonder. He turned his head back to me. "Mortals like fruit, right?" he asked.

"Yeah, mostly. Thanks, Ialion." He smiled at the praise. Ah, little kids.

"There was a rat here. It snuck in through a little hole in the wall that I just collapsed. We never had rats in Grim Batol. They're tasty."

My throat tightened and my blood ran cold. "...rats?" I squeaked out, every muscle in my body tightening and my mind set to 'alarm' in an instant, my legs ready to bolt at a moment's notice.

He vigorously nodded. "Yeah, a rat." He smacked his fangs together. "Really nice." He turned his head sideways and his slit pupils narrowed. "You don't like rats?"

I shivered. "I'm terrified of them."

"_I'm_ not scared of them, and you're five times my size."

"I JUST HAVE A PHOBIA OKAY?" I snapped, making Ialion jerk back. I shook my head. "Sorry, I shouldn't have yelled at you, it's just that I'm really, _really_ not fond of rats." I walked over to the bread Ialion had generously prepared for me, his head following me as if watching for another outburst.

He eyed me carefully. "Oookaaay?"

I bit into the loaf. "Okay, so, let's see if I can learn how to create a portal," I said to nobody in particular. I began sending to Selriona. _'Okay, I'm in the house.'_

There was a slight delay before her response came. _'Okay, great. So, um. Twilight realm. You're not going to be able to just sink into it. That's a lot more difficult. So you're going to have to use a portal to enter and leave.'_

_'That can't be _that _hard to learn, can it?'_

_'Well, I don't know. Your body doesn't exactly like channeling twilight energy.'_

I nodded in spite of myself. It was true, twilight flame felt just plain _wrong_ on my skin whenever I held it. I didn't enjoy molding my magic into it; it always felt a bit off. Wrong. Unnatural. As such, it had taken me months to learn how to project a basic fireball. A _portal_ made out of the same energy... _'No, it doesn't.'_

_'Well, no sense in procrastinating about then.'_ Ialion spoke to me. "Amanthe? Are you all right?"

I realized that to him, it looked like I had suddenly gone completely and utterly still. "I'm fine, just talking with your mother."

"Oh." He broke into a grin. "Tell her I said hello!"

_'Ialion says hello.'_

_'Oh good, he's still safe,'_ she 'said' with a sigh of relief._ 'So, anyway. What you have to do is first create an orb of twilight energy in front of you.'  
><em>

I focused, and began to summon my magic. I knew how to call up twilight energy, even though it wasn't easy. I soon had a ball of swirling blue energy in between my hands, roughly the size of a watermelon. The effort to keep it in place was titanic. My hands shook violently from the effort of keeping the energy in one place. _'Okay... I think I've got it...' _I gasped and let go of my hold over the power, the twilight essence fading into the Nether. _'No, I don't got it.'_

_'Hmm, how much did you call up?'_

_'It was the size of a pumpkin.'_

_'Yeah, that's big enough.'_

_'Let me try again.' _I gritted my teeth and began once more to call up twilight energy from inside my body.

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><p>A few hours later, I collapsed back in a chair, Ialion momentarily screeching in alarm as I had failed to hold the twilight energy while still manipulating it into a portal. The energy had, like all the times before, dissipated harmlessly.<p>

_'Amanthe, maybe you should rest,'_ Selriona sent with worry in her voice. _'I mean, you're going to get dehydrated.'_

This wasn't the first time she had asked, but this time I was too tired to protest. _'Yeah. Yeah, maybe I should.'_

_'Portals aren't exactly simple. You're not going to be do it on your first try.'_

_'_You_ did.'_

_'Yes but it's natural for me. For you, not so much, no.'_

Thirst beginning to claw at me, I bit into the apple again, swallowing the crisp, chilled fruit. _'Still, it would be good if I could find out. Who know's what's going on here that I can't see.'_

_'Yeah, but what I'm worried about most is the things that troll spoke about. I mean, nipping and biting shadows? Tainted wings and corrupted claws?'_ My eyes briefly flickered to Ialion, laying stomach-down on the table and watching me with worried eyes, but in spite of that his body language exuded boredom. Tainted wings, corrupted claws. It couldn't be, but I couldn't cross out the possibility that Selriona's friend Pallasion hadn't found everybody.

Selriona continued, seeming to have the same thoughts. _'I'm worried about that. I mean, we are _technically_ corrupted. If Pallasion hadn't found somebody...'_

_'No, that can't be it. If it was a Twilight dragon, why would they hide in Orgrimmar amongst thousands of mortals? It's got to be something else.'_

_'Maybe, but we can't cross out that likelihood.'_

_'Okay then, but how do you explain 'sleeping nightmares'?' _I asked her, jerking suddenly as I realized I had slowed my breathing to an uncomfortable point, making Ialion jump back from my sudden movement.

_'I - I don't know. It could be anything. Something happened to him, that's for certain. I... I need to ask Nalestrasza. I'm going to go to sleep. If anybody can figure it out, it'll be her.'_

I smirked at the mention of the sardonic Red, even though I had never met her. _'See you when you wake up, then?'_

_'Yup. Take care, see you in five hours.'_ With that, the pressure on my head dissipated.

I looked at Ialion. "Okay then. We've got a few minutes until sundown." I yawned, the effects of portal lag once again taking hold on me with its warm, inviting arms. "So, what do you want to do?"

Ialion pulled himself up into a sitting position, looking at me at eye level, a wicked smile slowly appearing on his fangs. "Oh, I've got an idea." For a moment I felt a vague sense of dread come over me, before he collapsed on his side, eyes closed, breathing slowly.

I brought my hand to my forehead for a moment before shaking him. "No you don't. Up." The whelpling stubbornly stayed still, eyes closed, but his breathing began to speed up, so I was getting somewhere. "Ialion, I know you're not sleeping, and I'm not going to _let_ you sleep. _Up._" Ialion stayed still, but the smile on his face betrayed him. Exasperated, I released him. "Okay then, guess I'll just have to eat all the meat here while he's sleeping."

_That_ got through to him. He had bolted into the air in a second, looking at me. "You wouldn't," he said accusingly, but with a hint of fear.

"Try me," I lied through my smirking teeth, crossing my arms.

For a minute we stayed still, the only sound being the gentle crackling of the torches lighting up the home and the flapping of Ialion's wings. He stared into my eyes, and I stared back, fighting off the urge to smile and laugh, an urge which only grew stronger the more I thought about it. We stayed like that for another minute.

And another.

Finally, Ialion gave an exasperated roar that sounded more like a shriek. He bent his head away, looking at me with only one eye. "FINE, you win. Hmmph." He turned around entirely, pouting.

I smiled in victory, before a yawn came up. "Okay Ialion, so _besides_ sleeping, what do you want to do?"

He turned around and opened his mouth...

_KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK!_

I jumped nearly two meters into the air, swore, then remembered I was around a child. "Coming!" I turned back to Ialion. "_Hide!_" I didn't need to tell him twice. When I barged my way to the door and opened it, I found Saltio standing there, a mild breeze behind her whipping up the leaves behind her, the sky beginning to take on a reddish hue as night approached. I frowned at the tauren's appearance. Why couldn't the Horde leave me alone?

"Saltio. What are you doing here?" I asked, failing to mask my disappointment.

"Well, I just got out, and I figured I'd be a good neighbor and come keep you company. Do you mind if I come in?"

_IALION!_ I chuckled nervously. "Actually, I do."

She shook her head, moving a hoof forward. "No, I insist, you must be lonely here all by your lonesome."

_Except I'm not alone!_ "No, I'm fine. Trust me," I said with rising anxiety, placing my hand in her path.

"Why are you so worried? I don't bite." She made another move to pass, which I blocked.

"Just, please turn around Saltio. Trust me, I am _fine_."

She narrowed her eyes, the fur around them bristling. She stepped back. "Okay, Amanthe. But remember, if you ever need someone to talk to, we're on the other side of the inn."

I nodded, forcing out a smile. "Thank you for the offer, however, I don't think I'll be needing much in the way of company. I'm fine on my own." I closed the door and turned around, letting my back slide down on it until I sat on the ground, releasing a slow breath of relief.

"By the Light, that was close," I said aloud to nobody in particular. Saltio had _almost_ walked in and possibly found Ialion. I had to be more careful than that. Speaking of the whelpling...

I stood. "Ialion, where are you?" Looking around, I soon found the Twilight whelp on the nest he had made in the shelf, curled into a ball and fast asleep. I growled and was about to wake him up when I stopped. "Eh, it's close enough to night." I walked over to my bed, forgetting I hadn't bathed, blew out the torches, and passed out beneath the warm covers.

I snapped up in my bed immediately. The world seemed hazy around the edges. The stench of smoke filled the air. My eyes widened and I jumped out of bed, light filling my vision from some unidentified source. I floundered out into the living room, looking towards where Ialion nested only to find that the young dragon wasn't there.

Panic seized in my throat. I whipped my head around frantically, searching for any sign of him. Then I spotted the door. The door out of my house had smoke billowing across it. Worried, I opened it, making the smoke all at once dissipate.

Outside was a conglomeration of all hells.

Homes all around Orgrimmar were ablaze, yet no smoke emerged from the conflagrations. A hot, dry wind buffeted my face. Dead and dying bodies littered the streets, making my breath catch in my throat. The pond boiled and seethed with some unknown source of heat, and boulders streaked through the sky, blazing flames echoing behind them. Everywhere I looked, flames crackled and people died. The sound of chilling screams reached my ears, a haunting melody echoing faintly through the streets, but slowly rising in volume. Then I turned my gaze towards the sky.

The skies were ablaze, a rolling mass of red and black obscuring anything else on the normally blue canvas, suddenly engulfing the city in a red tint. I looked up at the spectacle dumbfounded, and as I did the center of the red and black receded, becoming a pitch black sky with no stars, no moons, nothing. Once the last speck of red had vanished, the flames of Orgrimmar still burning around me and the haunting screams rising to a climax, the entire sky had been reduced to a smooth, impenetrable sheet of black.

And in the middle of it, as if the night held some beast, two enormous blazing red eyes snapped opened as the shouts of the dying roared.

I snapped up in my bed immediately. The world seemed hazy around the edges, but when I rubbed my fists in my eyes it cleared up. I took deep gasping breaths, trying to shake off the nightmare's hold on my heart. I felt something warm and heavy on my lap, and looking down I saw a shaking Ialion curled into a ball, eyes squeezed shut and whimpering.

"Ialion?" I asked, not bothering to hide the relief in my voice that he wasn't gone.

Slowly and still quaking, he opened a green eye and looked up at me. "H-hey Amanthe."

"Ialion, what happened?"

He gave out a particularly large shiver. "Nightmare."

"You too, huh?"

"You had a nightmare too?"

I nodded. "Yeah. Want to talk about it?"

As if I had insulted him, Ialion stopped shaking and flew out of my lap, hovering to look at me at eye-level. He shook his head. "No, I'm fine. It's just a dream. Not real, not important."

I raised an eye-brow. "You sure?"

He narrowed his eyes at me. "Well, do _you_ want to talk about _your_ nightmare?" I frowned. "Didn't think so," he said with a rather smug air of satisfaction about him. I sighed and pulled myself out of my bed, my heart still hammering within my chest. Still shaking off the last remnants of sleep and fear, Ialion and I both set out breakfast. I was halfway done with mine when a light rapping came from the door.

I groaned, and looked at Ialion."You know the drill." He nodded, and sped off. I walked up to the door, already speaking before I opened it. "Look, Saltio, I know you mean well, but..." I froze when I opened the door. On the other side of the door was the troll I had cured of mental trauma yesterday. He smiled when he saw me, his red and orange clothing blending in with the colors of the sunrise and Orgrimmar.

"'Ey, mon. Just thought I'd drop by and talk with ya. Amanthe, is it? May I come in?"

"Actually, I'd prefer if you didn't."

"No, please. What I have to tell ya ain't for prying ears to hear." Before I could do anything, the troll vanished in an explosion of arcane magic. Whirling around, I saw he had appeared in the middle of my house. Damn it, what was with everyone trying to get into my house? "Nice place ya got here."

I growled in spite of my fear of him finding Ialion, locked the door, and prepared a word of pain in the back of my mind. "What do you _want_, Troll?"

"Please, call me Ros'fon. Ya see, when ya healed me of whatever malady of the mind I had back in Liwatha's place, I couldn't help but notice something about ya."

I frowned, a feeling of unease appearing in my stomach as I began to recite the incantations and lines of commands for a variety of shadow spells in my mind. "And what would that be?"

"Well, don't take this the wrong way, but I noticed ya have quite a bit o' twilight energy on ya."

Before he could say anything else, I casted a shadowy word of pain on him, watching the troll drop to his knees in pain. I drew the flickering shadows cast by the torchlight around me, phasing my body into darkness, and charged a spell to flay his mind, the black/blue beam connecting with his head. He grunted in pain, unable to scream as I continued to hack and slash at his mind until a shimmering blue barrier opened up around him, and then he made a squeezing motion with one hand. My eyes widened, and before I knew it my magic slipped away from me, and when I tried to grasp it again it slipped away from me like a bar of greased soap.

I'd been counterspelled.

I slipped out of my shadowform as I prepared to call the Light onto him, not willing to risk him spreading the message of how I was supposedly a cultist.

He held up his hands in innocence under his mana shield. "'Ey, relax, mon! I never said I was gonna turn ya in. Truth be told, I just want to talk with ya."

I growled, stopping the prayer for the Light to smite him. "Talk then." I'd been found out, and so soon! How could I stay here when I was revealed so easily?

"Well, ya don't have to hide here. I've never seen ya at any of our meetings, so I'll just tell ya. You're not alone in this here city. We have a meeting two days from now, outside the city." Wait, was he saying what I thought he was saying? "Just go out the main gates, and turn south-east. Travel a kilometer or so, and you'll get there. The meeting's at high noon each weekend. Remember, ya have friends here."

I couldn't possibly pass up this opportunity. But still... was it a good idea? I'd have to ask Selriona. I had a pretty good idea of what she'd say, though. I narrowed my eyes as Ialion briefly poked his head around the bedroom door, then quickly drew back. "I'll think about it. Now _out!_" I shouted, opening the door.

"Fine, just remember what I said. I'll be see'in ya around." He blinked out of the house in a second, and I slammed the door shut behind him. Did I just get recruited into the Twilight's Hammer?

Ialion fluttered around the corner, a frown plastered on his snout. "A cultist? Maybe you should tell Broodmother about this?"

I nodded. "Yeah, yeah I'll ask her." _'Selriona?'_

It was a moment before her response came. _'Yeah?'_

_'There's been a little development. I think I got recruited into the Twilight's Hammer.'_

_'_What?_ What do you mean by that?'_

_'You know the troll I told you about? He just showed up and said he could sense twilight energy on me, and told me that I had friends in the city. Probably other cultists.'_

_'This is... I don't know. On one hand, we know for certain there are cultists. On the other, there are cultists.'_

_'Yeah. I'm thinking about playing along with it.'_

_'Okay. But if they try to directly corrupt you, like drinking the blood of the Faceless, get _out_ of there.'_

_'Yeah, I figured. Hey, did you get any help from Nalestrasza?'_

I could practically envision Selriona shaking her head. _'None whatsoever. She either couldn't get a good guess, or she's holding out on me. I can't tell which is more likely.'_

_'And Verthelion?'_

_'He's left for Hyjal. And besides, it's just one group of cultists, not worth the involvement of an Aspect. Amanthe, monitor them. If, I mean, when they start anything big, let me know. Try to uncorrupt whoever you can.'_

_'And how am I supposed to go about doing THAT?'_

A silence. _'Um, I'll get back to you on that. When do they meet?'_

_'Every weekend at noon. Both weekends. Two days from now.'_

_'Okay, good. So not too often, not enough time to plan stuff. Go to the meetings, and keep tabs on what they're doing. I'll try to figure out whatever they might do as best I can from my end. See you around.'  
><em>

She stopped using the link, and I turned to Ialion, who looked up at me. "So? So?"

I smiled. "Well, I'm going to go spy on the cultists a few days from now, and I have to go to Liwatha's at noon, so until then..." I chuckled at him. "What do you say we go outside a bit?"

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><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<br>**


	4. Chapter 4:Puzzle Box

**Disclaimer:** **I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Like always, massive thanks to my wonderful beta Dusty the Umbravita.**

**Happy April Fool's!  
><strong>

* * *

><p><span>Amanthe<span>

"So. So, so, so, so, so," chattered Ialion, perched on the top of the shelves he had claimed as his nest. "You're going soon?"

"Yep. Gotta go see what the cult's planning with Orgrimmar. Bear with me here; it's probably nothing good," I said, smirking.

He chuffed. "I'd be really surprised if they even _accidentally_ did something remotely not evil." I paused for a moment to decipher what he had said. The Twilight whelpling fluttered his wings, but remained immobile. "Are you sure Liwatha's not going to need your help? While you're away, I mean?"

"I'm positive. I asked her, and she says that she's got other helpers for Saturday and Sunday. I've got the weekends off, basically," I said, packing the indigo clothing I had brought with me into my pack. "So I go there, see what's going on, and decide on what to do from there. And in the meantime you...?" I asked, looking up at him questioningly.

"I stay here and do not leave. Once you get back, you'll take me on a little hunt outside. Got it." The young dragon sighed. "This isn't _nearly_ as fun as I thought it would be."

"Yeah, well." I finished packing. "What can you do about it now?"

A frown evolved on his snout. "Nothing."

I shrugged. "You volunteered." I decided to change the subject. "You know where the food is, right?" I didn't need to ask him, he knew by now, but it never hurt to be sure.

Ialion nodded. "Yup, in the cupboards."

"Good. Well, see you later. I don't know how long this'll take." I turned around to leave, when Ialion stopped me.

"Wait." Turning around, I saw he had come off his nest and hovered close by. "Amanthe, be careful there. I mean, this is the _Twilight's Hammer_." He spat out the name of the cult like it was venom. "They're very keen on 'succeed-or-die' with their recruits. Mother told me so."

I gulped. I had expected as much, but still... "Good to know. I'll be careful, Ialion. Stay safe."

He snorted. "I wouldn't be worrying about _me_."

"Oh, your optimism is just so _inspiring_!" I sardonically replied.

He shrugged his wings. "Amanthe, the cult is our _enemy_. They are spreading corruption; it's our task to contain it."

"I know, I know." I reached over and stroked the scales on the top of his head, no signs of the crest he would develop later on in life. "Ialion, I'll be _fine_. I can take care of myself just fine."

He looked down, peering up at me from one eye. "I know, but it's scary. I mean, it's _the_ Twilight's Hammer. They don't mess around."

"Yeah, but they don't really have much in the way of strength now. Deathwing is gone, the three remaining Old Gods are hiding. They're really just another doomsday cult now. Goodbye, Ialion," I said, walking towards the door. I closed it behind me before he could respond, and began walking out the way Ros'fon told me the cult meeting was. I checked over my illusion, and to my relief, it still held firm.

As tauren, orcs, trolls, and the occasional goblin, forsaken, or blood elf passed me, I began to ponder on how I would manage to uncorrupt somebody, like Selriona had suggested. I knew enough about Old God corruption, both from prior experience and post-oathstone experience, that there were two types of the stuff. Physical corruption, the kind that made tentacles grow out of your fingers and your blood turn into acid, and mental corruption, which made you more aggressive, hateful, and just all-around violent. It was possible to have one without the other; you could be physically corrupted but still fight for what you believe in, or you could be mentally corrupted but appear perfectly fine. Of course, having one usually went hand in hand with the other.

I couldn't dispel any physical corruption; I didn't have enough experience with Old God corruption, but mental corruption... maybe therapy, just therapy could reverse that? I couldn't contact Selriona; I'd tried in the morning, and she slept. She probably still did.

It seemed about right, I thought as I passed into the Valley of Strength. I could select one person mentally corrupt and essentially give them therapy. Problem was, how would I do it without them being suspicious?

I shrugged. Oh well. I could work on it later. First step would be to just get _into_ the cult in the first place.

The gates passed by me, and with it, the crowds of people out and about turned into a few groups, then just a trickle of people traveling back and forth. As I left the gate, drawing little more than an eye flicker from the guards, an eye flicker that made me cringe regardless, there was hardly anyone with me in case something went awry. I shook my head and focused. What had Ros'fon said? South-east?

It took me only a moment to use the sun's position to orient myself, but it took significantly longer for me to travel the kilometer to the destination. Halfway there, I stopped in my tracks. What if there was no cult to watch? What if this was a trap?

Just as these thoughts appeared in my brain, I saw the vague outline of tents. I let out a breath I didn't know that I held, and advanced with renewed haste.

As I got closer, I came across more people, in either normal clothes or the trademark violet robes of the cult. My blood already began to boil. The cult... the blasted Twilight's Hammer _cult_. I wanted them dead. However, I forced myself to stay calm, and not look suspicious. If hiding in Orgrimmar was hard, this would be even worse.

Now that I was close, I could make out details. Several dozen dark purple tents emblazoned with a mace sat in three circles, and behind them stood a mammoth tent, big enough to hold a dragon. It's opening was sealed, and looked like it opened magically.

An orc walked up to me as I entered the general perimeter of the camp. "A newbie?"

I nodded, trying not to eye the enormous axe he held in his hands. "Where do I go?"

He huffed. "We're to go to the main tent. Nil Sag'ma is going to give us a speech."

My mind screeched to a halt. I heard that name a few days ago, when I ran into the Horde in the Twilight Highlands. So they were working for the cult? Then that box they held... what was in it? "Nil Sag'ma?"

"He's the leader of our camp. Showed up a few months ago and began to bring us back from the edge of scorn and mockery. He is making us a force to be reckoned with again since great Deathwing's fall. One of his policies is that all are welcome. So, go ahead. MOVE!" I started at his sudden outburst, stumbled, and quickly made my way to where the other _cultists_ congregated. I noticed some of them, wearing normal clothing, ducked into tents and re-emerged with violet robes. For a moment I considered doing the same, with the twilight colored clothing I had brought, but I decided against it. I certainly wasn't supposed to have twilight-colored clothing before being in the cult.

The crowd that stood around the largest of the tents was maybe a hundred in size. I recognized Ros'fon standing infront of the crowd, facing out towards us, a goblin to his right, leaving enough space in between them. I stopped in the back of the murmuring crowd, watching for anything suspicious... well, more suspicious than usual for a cultist camp. Somebody stopped next to me, and I nearly jumped when I heard Saltio's voice.

"Amanthe?"

"Ah!" I whipped around to her. "_Saltio?_ What are you doing here?"

"I just joined. This is my first meeting. I could ask you the same thing." The tauren smiled. "So? Why are you here?"

I gulped. This hadn't occurred to me. "Um... well, it just seemed like the right thing to do. They look like they'll be the winning side in the long run." _Bullshit_, I hissed at myself.

Luckily, though, Saltio didn't seem to pick up on my hesitation. "Really? That's such a coincidence; that's why I decided to join too!" Her eyes turned serious and her voice stern. "But we can't let Breorn know. You know, he's a guard."

I nodded. "Right. Can't tell anyone."_ That_ went without saying. 'Hey, you know I'm actually a human here on a mission from the Twilight Dragonflight. Oh, by the way, your wife is a cultist.'. Yes, _that_ would go well.

I began pushing forward, slipping through the holes in the group of people to make my way towards the front. As I got halfway there, I realized that wasn't needed. All the chattering went silent at once, and the ground rose up, the goblin clenching her hands and making the earth she and Ros'fon stood upon rise so that they overlooked us all. But in between them was someone else, someone who's presence immediately drew all eyes upon him.

He was an orc, his skin a brighter green than any other orc I had seen, and on top of that, his eyes were an intense, near glowing green, like how Ialion's poisonous green eyes would look if they were luminescent. He wore the standard cultist robes, but his were more ornate, with a spiked headpiece behind his neck that shot up flames every now and then. He was incredibly well muscled, and he looked like he might match or even exceed a drake in terms of physical strength. He had no hair, and scanning his eyes over us, I felt inundated in his presence.

He radiated an aura of power, making the hairs on my neck stand straight up, like dominoes in reverse, and my skin itched from the magical prowess he gave off in waves. But even more than that was the feeling of raw _evil_, of concentrated malevolence and danger that washed over me, choking me, making me fidget in my spot and slowly back up to where Saltio was, and she, along with some of the other, probably newer members of the cult, made no attempts to hide their unease in his presence.

As his eyes traveled over the crowd, he stood silently, as if waiting for something. When his eyes reached me, I felt a twinge of horror and numbness rise within me, the horror that came with nightmares, and the numbness that came with sleep. The way he stared at me made me feel like he was a hunter examining his prey, and that he didn't think I was worth the effort to hunt. My throat clenched, and then he spoke, his voice deep and gravely, more like the sound boulders made when they ground together than any actual voice. "I see that we have two new recruits among us. Tell me, tauren, what is your name?"

Saltio stuttered, making the orc smile, as if enjoying her misery. Wretched cultist, he probably was. "S-Saltio, sir."

"Saltio," he said slowly and ominously, like he couldn't decide how the name tasted on his lips. He turned his gaze to me, once again causing the feelings of terror and sleep make themselves known. "And your name, blood elf?"

"A-Amanthe," and before I could stop myself, his aura of danger wrenched the word from my lips. "Sir."

"Amanthe, Saltio. Our two newest recruits. Allow me to introduce myself. I... am Nil Sag'ma. As you can no doubt see, I am the leader of this branch of the Twilight's Hammer. As a whole, we shall wage war on Orgrimmar from within, creating havoc, chaos and death until their lives are snuffed out forever, and our masters can return to this world." At this, a few cheers rose up from the braver members of the cult, the ones not influenced as much by the raw evil and power Nil Sag'ma radiated. "Tell me, Ros'fon, Glidia, have these two been sorted?"

The goblin shook her head. "No, sir. They only just arrived."

He nodded. "Very well then. Glidia, take them to be sorted whilst I finish up here."

Glidia nodded. "Yes, sir." She turned to Saltio and I, then jumped, a small whirlwind forming under her feet and carrying her to us. "Well, follow me then. Let's see if you two are worth the flesh you're made out of." I gulped. That wasn't exactly too reassuring. I caught Nil Sag'ma saying a few other words to the hushed crowd, but I couldn't make them out. I didn't want to go with Glidia. I wanted to stay back at the crowd and find out what the cult's plans were, since he no doubt would say something along those lines.

We reached the smallest circle of tents, and stood just outside of the ring, Glidia standing infront of Saltio and I, gazing up at the tauren. "Do you have a sword? Or magic?"

Saltio scratched her head. "Well, I know some sword-work from when I was a kid."

"Hmmph." With one swift motion, Glidia descended into a tent and came back out lugging a sword clearly too big for her, the handle violet and the metal tinted with green and purple. With a mighty effort, she tossed it to Saltio, who managed to catch it without getting sliced up, the sword almost as tall as her. "Get back from her, blood elf. I'll attend to you soon enough." Then, with a clenching motion of Glidia's fist, the stone in front of Saltio buckled and flexed, an earth elemental rising up, the vortex of stones at its feet churning up a miniature dust-devil, the two glowing pebbles on its tiny head narrowed at Saltio.

"Beat or be beaten. That is the way of the Twilight's Hammer, the way of our Masters." Then with that, the mass of living boulders attacked Saltio. She sidestepped a massive stone fist, and before I could see anything else Glidia led me away from the fight.

"While she is handling that, you will be proving yourself. Do you use a weapon or magic?"

"Magic," I replied.

She smiled. "Good. Then you'll have _no_ trouble with this." She closed her eyes for a moment, and then a geyser erupted next to her. The water exploded up out of the ground, knocking some pebbles away before swirling around in mid air, churning and bubbling. A spray of mist came out of a whirlpool at the ground, making me jump back as Glidia watched me from a safe distance. The water continued to twist and writhe in coils before settling into the final form of a water elemental my size.

I gulped and shifted to my shadow-form.

"Have fun, elf." The water elemental surged at me, water droplets trailing in the path it left through the air. I managed to twist my way out of a massive fluid fist before weaving a shield of light around me. I felt strength surge into my feet, and using the temporary clarity of body and soul I dashed as far from the elemental as I could, wheeling around and whispering a word of pain at it. The effect was immediate, the elemental stopping its trek towards me to place its massive fists to its shark-like head. I charged up a powerful shadow attack, weaving my mana into the spell and blasting the fibers of its mind, before channeling a spell to flay it. It roared, and held up a hand, water swirling around its fists in thick coils before detaching, the water bolt sailing through the air and dissipating against my barrier, too fast for me to dodge.

Off in the side of my mind, I heard a _slam_ as Saltio fought with her earth elemental, but I kept my focus on blasting the water elemental with a plague, and vampiracly backlashing my attacks to heal me. Its whirlpool slowed down, and its gurgled roars of pain turned to growls. But at the same time, I felt my mana pool diminishing with each spell.

With another devastating blast to whatever served as the elemental's brain, it roared and reared up. I stared in horror as it grew to twice its normal size, before charging at me, shrinking as it went, before a fist slammed into me. The fist broke my shield of light and sent me flying back, the shadows of my body writhing around in coils from the impact as it knocked the wind out of me. I gasped as the elemental fell on me, pummeling me with its massive fluid hands. I brought up shadow magic into my throat, manipulated it, and unleashed a bone-chilling scream.

It may have been only an elemental, but the spell still got through to it, and it fled from me as if I was a demon. I was running out of mana; I had used a lot of it in the sustained assault against the elemental while it battered my shield with water bolts. If I ran out... it was over. I would die.

_That_ thought spurred me. As the final vestiges of the psychic scream wore off from the elemental, I searched deep inside me, pulling out my mana and manipulating it, changing the raw arcane energy, unusable to me, into something more powerful, and much more destructive. Blue light lit up my hands as I let loose the destructive power of twilight flame in a fireball, hitting the elemental right in the torso. It let loose a gurgled roar of pain, the hole in its chest sparkling with indigo as it slowly closed up, but before it could I launched another devastating fireball at its head, removing it in a spray of steam, water, and shadow, making it rear back, vainly holding out its fists to protect itself, the slowly regenerating, cresting head turned away.

The twilight flame felt cold on my skin, sending chills up my spine, but in spite of that I let loose more fireballs, each one proving its worth as each fireball vaporized chunks of its body faster than it could regenerate them, until finally, it didn't regenerate. Its bracers fell to the ground, and what remained of it turned into a puddle.

I turned around, slipping out of my shadowform, breathing heavily and letting the tendrils of twilight flame around my hands dissipate, looking at Glidia, who's mouth hung loosely open, Saltio next to her. Saltio appeared to have a limp in her right leg, and she held her left hand gingerly.

The goblin was the first to speak. "You... how did you... you used twilight flame. Where did you learn to do that?"

I shrugged. Like I was going to tell her _that! _"I just, sort of always could. Comes naturally." _Hah._

She shook her head. "Uh, right. Saltio, you're in the lowest class. I suppose I should congratulate you on barely managing to kill that _weak_ elemental. Congratulations. Amanthe, you'd normally be right with her, but..." She smirked. "For your ability to use twilight flame, I'm bumping you up to the high class." I smiled. This was... good. The higher up I was, the more I could listen to their plans, the more I could figure out ways to sabotage them. She pointed over to one of the rings of tents. "Now MOVE! Nil Sag'ma is giving a special speech to your class today. Feel special." She yawned. "Are you still here?"

Frowning, I turned around and headed towards the designated area. I didn't look forward too much to be in Nil Sagma's presence any more than necessary. Saltio eyed me as I passed and mouthed 'How?'.

I shrugged off her question and continued on my way when an ear-piercing yawn filled my head, along with a pressure above my ears.

_'Hey, Amanthe,' _came Selriona's sleepy voice. _'How's life?'_

_'It has Twilight cultists everywhere,'_ I remarked. _'I got placed in the higher-up class for being able to use twilight fire.'_

_'How did they figure that out?'_ she asked, a note of worry in her voice.

_'They had me fight a water elemental. And I think I have a way to uncorrupt somebody.'_

_'Really?'_

_'Yeah. Therapy.'_

A short pause. _'Hmm, that might work, but it's going to be really difficult. Any idea who you're going to try to save?'_

I considered this for a moment. _'Saltio. She's my neighbor, and she just joined. I might be able to keep her from getting in too deep.'_

_'Anything else that might be trouble?'_

_'Yeah, their leader, Nil Sag'ma. He is_ scary_ as all hells. He radiates danger like nothing else I've ever seen.' _I slammed into a blood elf with an 'oof'! Stepping back, I raised my eyebrows to see that it was the blood elf from the Highlands. Layalith, was it?

Her blue eyes narrowed. "Watch it, _newbie_," she said with an audible scowl, before stalking off, muttering about how she didn't have to put up with such creatures.

_'Hmm. Best avoid him, then.'_

_'Easier said than done. He's giving a speech in the group I'm in. Staying away from him _isn't_ going to be easy.'_

_'Damn it.'_

I sighed. _'Couldn't have said it better myself. Well, at least I'm high up. Anything goes on, I'll be able to find out easily enough.'_

_'Yeah, but you're also exposed to the most corrupt people.'_

I frowned as I entered the ring of violet tents, cultists all congregating towards the middle where Nil Sag'ma stood, patiently, like a hawk just before swooping at a field mouse, the feeling of evil that seeped from him making me slow down as I got closer and threatening to suffocate me. Without a doubt, _this_ was a truly corrupted orc.

_'Apparently he's giving us a special speech. As to what, I don't know.' _I got an idea. _'Maybe I can slip away during...'_

_'That might work. Snoop about for anything overly suspicious. Let me know when you find anything.'_ The link closed, leaving me a bit unnerved about how she said 'when'.

The two dozen or so cultists that gathered in the middle all fell silent at once as Nil Sag'ma's deep, rumbling voice echoed through the air. "You all know what you must do. Layalith and he companions have brought us the air elementals needed. You there!" I froze, thinking he meant me, but somebody else's voice spoke up. I distracted myself, diving into the nearest tent, which was filled with a few books written in Orcish, titles that my orb translated into things such as 'Titans? On the Old Gods' world? It's more likely than you think' and 'Elemental fire for the soul'.

I caught more of the conversation. "Nil Sag'ma, the Liberality Confederacy plans to spend Noblegarden in Thunder Bluff this year. This is a perfect opportunity for - " At that point, the words broke off into pure Orcish, my Orb of Deception failing again. I noticed that it usually had a lapse for a dozen or so seconds thrice daily. This was number two, the first one having happened while I wasn't listening to any Orcish. The Orb wasn't supposed to be able to translate languages; its magic was stretched too far.

"Enough," came Nil Sagma's voice, rolling through the crowd like thunder. The voice stopped. "We will carry it out during the third day of the Noblegarden celebration."

I sprinted into the next tent. This one held a fist-sized crystal suspended in a container, but except for that and a few books, there was nothing of note.

"Now, get to work! We have preparations to make!"

Crap, crap, crap! Get out! I ran out of the tent as fast as I could and did my best to look inconspicuous. It wasn't hard; clearly the wretched cultists were too unnerved by Nil Sag'ma's presence to be suspicious of much of anything. For a moment I caught sight of him and accidentally looked towards his eyes, sending a fresh wave of terror through my bones.

For the next few hours, I walked too and fro, helping out with the cultists, while keeping an eye out for anything that caught my eye. Very few things showed up, though, and the few suspicious things I found, such as the same air-elemental boxes that Layalith and her companions had in the Highlands, sat under lock and key by none other than Nil Sag'ma himself. I helped them sharpen weapons and prepare spells, but I made sure to sabotage a few things here and there. Sadly, though, there wasn't a whole lot I could do. I occasionally swiped a key or hid a dagger or something, but in my position on the ladder, there wasn't a whole lot I could do. And of course, I garnered some attention for being able to use twilight flame before joining, not to mention having the ever-scowling Layalith breathing down my neck.

By the time it was done, the sun crept towards the horizon, not quite turning Durotar's reddish ground into the color of blood. I hurried back, the other cultists making sure not to arrive in one group lest they arouse suspicion. One thing I did have, though, for being in the 'higher up' class, was a box, as a token of their generosity.

But it wasn't just any box.

It was, like most things related to the Twilight's Hammer, a dark purple in color. The box had a multitude of clasps, ledges, and hidden levers on it. The creepiest part was the giant eye painted on one side of the puzzle box, specifically designed so that no matter where I stood it always appeared to watch me. The cool metal sent a chill down my spine.

My curiosity was piqued as I walked back to Orgrimmar. I began to fiddle with one of the latches when I heard a voice around me.

_'The drowned god's heart is black as ice...'_

I jumped two meters in the air, tossing the box on the ground. "Holy _shit_." I eyed the innocent-looking object carefully, afraid it would grow fangs any second and latch onto my throat. I gingerly reached out a foot and flipped the box over onto another side. When nothing happened, I reached up, holding it by a sliding panel, and dropped it into my bag. Wonder how hard that would be to incinerate.

_'Um, Selriona, you know how you said I'd have to watch out for them corrupting me?'_

_'Yeah?'_

_'They gave me the puzzle-box from the darkest of all hells. It _whispered _to me when I tried to open it.'_

Selriona's voice came with panic laced into it. _'What did it say?'_

_'Something about a god... oh yes. The drowned god's heart is black as ice.'_

Silence. Then, _'I know what it's talking about. An Old God near the Maelstrom.'_

_'How do you know that?'_

_'When I helped in the fight against Deathwing, there were Old God tentacles lashing at us. That has to be what the box talked about.'_

_'So it's not just nonsense. It does give us hints as to where they are.'_

_'Maybe, but look. Do _not _use it. It's not worth going mad over. Keep it locked away until we can find a way to destroy its corruption. Just destroying the box won't be enough; the taint will just seep out of it.'_

I grunted mentally. _'Lovely.'_ I passed through the gates without much incident. _'What is that thing anyway?'_

_'I'm not too sure. Anyway, did you find anything in the camp?'_

I growled in agitation. _'Nothing. Anything that might be usable, Nil Sag'ma was next to it, and getting close to _him_ is one step_ _short of suicide, I can tell.'_

Selriona growled through the link as well. _'Great_. _I don't know. But that name, Nil Sag'ma. I feel like I've heard it before.'_

_'Probably one of _those_ names.'_ I passed through the Valley of Strength, anger boiling in me as I looked at Grommash Hold. I forced it down, willing neutralness into myself. The cultists all entered the city in different spots at different times to avoid rousing suspicion. Evil as they were, it was a good plan, I had to admit. _'Nil Sag'ma also said that they're going to carry out something on the third day of Noblegarden, which is two weeks from now. Sounds like a problem.'_

_'Hmm. But what is it?'_

_'Beats me. There's a lot of things that the cult can carry out with their _specialized_ magic. Probably has something to do with these elemental boxes in their camp.'_

_'Maybe. Maybe.' _The connection faded.

Back in the apartment, I found Ialion waiting for me patiently on his nest, his tail wagging back and forth anxiously. "Hey," he said, a tone of relief evident in his voice. "How'd it go? Did you get attacked?"

I smiled, locked the door behind me, and walked up to the shelves, patting his horns. "It was good. The leader's terrifying, though. And I have to go back tomorrow." I frowned. "Greeeeeat."

"Did they try anything on you?" Ialion said, pupils slitting slightly.

I reached into my pack and pulled out the puzzle box, holding it gently. Ialion jumped back onto all fours when he saw it, wings outstretched, snarling at it. "Calm down. I just need to find a place to put it so it can't do anything to us."

"Why is that thing even in this _house?_" he screamed, eyes trained on the box.

"Well would you rather have me toss it out onto the street?" He closed his maw. "Any place I can put this thing where it won't try to murder us in our sleep?"

He tilted his head sideways. "Well... maybe you could toss it into that waste bin you brought in yesterday."

"Hmm, that might work. Just have to remember to buy a new one, then." I walked over to the bin and tossed in the box, and carried it into the most isolated corner of the house that I could find. Well, that trash bin was unusable now. "So, what do you want to do for - " _KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK! _"_For the love of the Light!_" I stormed over to the door, ripping the lock open as I let tiny wisps of shadow whirl around me to intimidate Saltio, who I just _knew_ was going to be the one there.

She didn't disappoint.

I yanked the door open, slamming it against the wall and making Saltio jump back, placing her hands up innocently. "What? I just wanted to ask you a few things." The slight flutter of wings behind me signaled Ialion hiding.

I growled. "Let me guess. How can I use twilight flame?"

"Among other things like, how's it in the higher class, and such." She entered before I could stop her from doing so. "You know, you could use some painting here, little ambience."

I gave her a look that could break Selriona's horns. "You're very much a busybody, you know that?"

She shrugged. "It's because I care."

"Well you could _care_ a bit less! It's not - it's extremely irritating, okay?" She frowned. "Let me guess, how can I use twilight flame?"

"Well, you can start with that, I guess. Do you mind?" she asked, motioning to the chairs.

"I guess not. I've sort of always been able to use twilight flame." _Hah, right._ "It just comes naturally to me." I snapped my fingers as I said this to emphasize the fake-point I tried to make.

Saltio sat down in a chair and nodded, but her eyes betrayed her suspicion. "I've never heard of anything like _that_ before. You sure that's the case?"

_Damn it_.

I shrugged, trying my best to look nonchalant. "I'm different from others, what can I say?" Not a complete lie. I couldn't think of too many other Twilight Dragonsworn. "Anything else you want to get out of the way?" I asked, tired of her _constantly_ dropping in on me _every singl_e _day since I came here_.

"Well, what's it like in your group? In mine, we just trained constantly and learned the whole story about the Old Gods and the Titans. It sounds pretty likely. Too bad for the Old Gods, though. They lucked out."

_Uh oh._ The 'truth' about them. She was being indoctrinated. If I was going to keep her from being corrupted, I had to act fast, and put on the 'nice, friendly, uncorrupting' act. She continued. "We also did a bit of training." She rubbed her forearms, and I could tell from her expression that bruises probably developed underneath her fur. I didn't even feel happy that a member of the Horde was injured; she was being corrupted. Despite her meddling, she _tried_ to be a good person. She joined the cult because she thought they would win, even though they wouldn't. She was misinformed, and she'd pay the price with her corruption. Unless I could stop it in its tracks.

"Are you okay?"

She huffed. "I'll live. So, what did you do up in your group?"

"Well, we mainly just sharpened weapons, organized spell reagents, and all that stuff. Something big's going down during Noblegarden, that much I can tell, but I wasn't able to find out what."

"Why don't you just ask somebody?"

I deadpanned. Then I smacked my forehead. "Gods damn it. I really do miss the obvious."

"So, Noblegarden, huh?"

I nodded. "Yeah. I'm gonna ask tomorrow what's going to go down." _And do anything I can to sabotage it._

Saltio nodded. "Okay, great. Hey." Her face took on an apprehensive look. "Do you want to come over tomorrow? Breorn and I are having tea, you'll love it."

For a moment I wanted to say no, but I remembered this would give me the perfect opportunity to at least slow down her corruption. Ialion poked his head out behind Saltio, unnoticed by the tauren. "Sure, I'll come over first thing tomorrow."

Saltio looked surprised. Not too shocking, I hadn't exactly been very polite around her. Blasted Horde - shut up. Then she smiled. "Great! I'll see you then." Before I could say another word the energetic, can't-mind-her-own-business tauren left my house in a single fluid motion.

Ialion looked at me, having gone unnoticed by my neighbor. "So?"

I looked back at him. "So, we have a few hours till sundown. Let's go outside a bit." Of course, that always involved him hiding in my pack, but he didn't want to risk anything more.

That night, I had the third nightmare since I had arrived in Orgrimmar.

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><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<strong>


	5. Chapter 5:Impending Invasion

**Disclaimer: I do ****not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Like always, thanks to my wonderful beta Dusty the Umbravita!**

**Chapter published 4/8/12**

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><p><span>Amanthe<span>

A dull thrum filled the air of Grim Batol as I walked down a spiral stairwell to the magma pool. The light below pulsed rapidly, shaking stone tiles loose and sending stones falling down amidst rubble. The entire place had become a ghost town. I soundlessly progressed downward, unaware of how I had gotten to be there. An explanation came to mind; Selriona had called me back.

So why was it so quiet?

The entirety of Grim Batol shook, making me lose my footing and fall down the rest of the stairs, head over heels, until I arrived at the bottom, a small platform of rock attached to a stairwell, with molten rock besetting me on all sides. I knelt at the edge of the magma, peering down into its depths. I dipped my hand in. The magma felt cool to the touch, and I waved my hand around in it before pulling it back out, globs of red falling off my unharmed hand. I leaned over the pool of magma, gazing at where my reflection should have been. I thought I saw it, some glimmer of my face, and curious, I leaned in closer, unaware that the stairs turned into a slippery ramp behind me. A bubble gurgled up to the surface of the red and orange pool, before deflating with no event. I smiled.

Then a hand suddenly burst out, red and black like it was made of cooling lava, and grasped my face with its sharp nails, preventing me from getting air. I screamed into the hand as the searing, scalding lava burned at my face, a lot cooler than it should have been, but still unbearable. I jumped back, trying to escape, but the hand just followed me out of the pool, seeming to stretch at the arm. I howled in pain and backed up towards the ramp, unable to go up it for lack of traction. I grabbed at the hand and tried desperately to peel it off, ignoring the pain. Finally, after what seemed like hours, I managed to peel the limb off. The skinny, decrepit magma-arm, three meters long with inch-long claws, fell off of me like it was dead. Than it lurched up, grabbing me at my throat and hoisting me into the air, higher and higher.

I choked and fought it, trying to pry the searing, crushing grasp from my throat with everything I had, but nothing worked. The hand hoisted me higher and higher, choking me as it squeezed around my throat. I let out a gasp of air, and desperately choked out a word of pain towards whatever held me.

The hand flew away from me, dropping me thirty feet onto the hard stone platform, the ramp now gone, leaving me in the middle of a sea of molten rock. I let out a cry of pain as my legs broke, and wasting no time the hand grabbed me again by the throat, and pulled me into the pool.

I struggled and tried to fight against the burning, engulfing pain that had enveloped my being, but couldn't. I tried to scream, but only succeeded in breathing in magma, setting my insides on fire. A figure appeared in front of me, a large head with no eyes, made of the same molten rock, with fangs that looked sharp enough to sheer through solid thorium. The creature growled and lunged at me, the fangs open to my throat...

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><p>"AH!" I bolted straight up, hands to my throat to ward off a nonexistent predator. Sweat clung to every part of my body, leaving me shivering in spite of the phantom heat from the nightmare. A crash echoed from outside my room, and calling upon the Light, my hands released enough glow to let me find Ialion, who'd fallen off his nest at my scream and thrashed wildly on the ground for a few moments, before stopping to look at the ball of Light in my hands with wide, upside-down eyes, his rapid breathing audible from my distance.<p>

The whelpling let out a relieved sigh. "Thank the Titans, it wasn't real."

I understood what he meant. That had been the third nightmare since my arrival in Orgrimmar. None of them had anything to do with each other. The first was me in a burning Orgrimmar, blazing red eyes in the black sky. The second had been me as a kid being chased by the big bad worgen, and this time...

"Something's wrong, Ialion. Something's not right here. We shouldn't have this many nightmares."

Shaking, he pulled himself into a hover, flying into my room.

_'Amanthe, what happened?'_

_'What do you mean?'_

_'You just suddenly screamed into the link! Are you all right?'_

_'I'm fine, I'm fine, just shaken. I didn't notice I used the link.' _I spoke to Ialion. "I'm going to place up wards around the house. Something's interfering with our sleep."

The whelpling nodded, flying over behind me and landing on my back, hugging my neck with his forelegs and wings. I could feel him shaking violently against me.

_'Well you did use the link. What in the name of Aman'thul happened?'_

_'I just woke up from a nightmare.'_

_'Another one? That's a bit... suspicious.'_

_'You're telling me. Ialion too. I'm putting up wards around the house. Something's wrong in Orgrimmar.' _I walked over to the door out of my house, hands still glowing with Holy Light, and began to place wards against evil on the house. I stopped to light a candle, letting its flickering illumination replace my magical light. I continued to weave the wards around the house, feeling their magical lines and commands stretch and intermingle with each other, protecting my house from anything malevolent in nature. Hopefully, the cause of the nightmares would be stopped by them.

By the time I was done, it was still night outside. Ialion let go of me, and returned to his nest.

_'Alright, I've put up wards. Should keep the excessive nightmares away. Tomorrow I'm going to go look for whatever is causing that. Something's here. Something more than just a couple of cultists.'_ As I sent this to Selriona, I found my eyes being drawn to the waste-bin in the corner, still holding the puzzle box. That couldn't be the cause. I'd had nightmares before that thing arrived. So what was the cause?

I shook my head as Selriona spoke to me. _'Good, good. Something's wrong in Orgrimmar, we've got that. I _need _to teach you h__ow to enter the twilight realm.'_

_'Can it wait until day? I need to sleep.'_

_'Good point. 'Night, Amanthe.'_

I turned back to Ialion, shaking himself as he nested. "Good night, Ialion."

He purred. "Good night, Amanthe." He closed his eyes, and he was out like a light. Nodding, I blew out the candle and climbed back into my own bed. I let my body sink down into the covers as numbness crept over me.

When I opened my eyes, they met two green ones surrounded by purple scales.

I jumped back, my vision expanding to let me see Ialion's fanged smirk. "Morning, Amanthe!" he said cheerfully, sitting on my lap. "Are you forgetting something?"

I narrowed my eyes, tilting my head to the side as I looked back at him. "Um, what?" I asked, sleep still too recent for me to have much in the way of rational thought.

Ialion stretched out along my stomach, wings elevated, as he scraped the claws on his forelegs across each other. "Oh, I don't know, maybe a certain tauren who is being corrupted," Even before he finished, I knew what he meant. "And that you're supposed to have tea with about now?"

I nodded. "Right, that. If you could just get off of me, that would be great, thank you." He pouted, obviously enjoying my body heat, but complied. I pulled myself out of bed. "And I've still got the cult to spy on at noon. Yippee. You know where breakfast is."

"I already ate."

My heart stopped. "Ialion... exactly how long have I slept?"

"Oh, not too long, you've got, I don't know, maybe two hours till noon."

"TWO HOURS? Why didn't you wake me up before?" Ialion's wicked smile and snicker was answer enough. "Damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it, I'm going to be late!" I ran out of the house, checked my illusion, made sure I had bathed the night before, and satisfied with both, flew out the door towards Saltio and Breorn's home.

Their home didn't appear too different from mine on the outside. I knocked on the door, and waited for a response. Before long, Breorn opened the door, and smiled when he saw my face. Behind him, I noticed several candles alight, along with a table in the middle and two doorways to the left and the right. The smell of honey and mint wafted out gently from behind him.

"Amanthe! Saltio told me you were coming, but I was beginning to fear that you weren't."

"I just slept in. Nothing too bad." Except that something bad is here, causing me nightmares. "May I come in?"

The guard nodded. "Certainly, come in, come in. The tea is just about done." The tall tauren stepped aside, letting me enter. Inside, I noticed that in the left doorway, I could make out several books laying on the ground haphazardly, their spines contorted by the positions they laid in. The smell of honey and mint radiated out from the doorway to the right, and I saw Saltio's tail flick briefly, a white tip against brown fur.

"Amanthe?" I heard her call.

"Yeah, it's me."

She stepped out. "Oh good, I was beginning to think..."

For a moment I felt the urge to cut her off, but resisted it. When she trailed off, I spoke, shaking my head as I found a seat around the table. "No, I just slept in."

"Well, you're just in time! I just finished the honeymint tea. Usually Breorn makes it, he's a good cook, but I decided," She shrugged. "Why not try? Make yourself at home, I'll be right out." She disappeared back into what I assumed was the kitchen and came back within moments with a jug of a brownish yellow fluid with a leaf hanging off the edge. She set it down on the table and sat down across from Breorn, so that the three of us made a sort of triangle. The guard got up and fetched three cups out of the cupboard and handed them out.

I nodded my thanks as I received one, examining the pearly substance with darker beads lining the top. Saltio lifted the jug of tea, steam still billowing off of it, and poured me some. I held out my cup until she was done. "Thank you." I sipped it gently. The taste was pleasant, if a bit hot. The honey and mint went well together. I'd had better honeymint tea, but I remembered that I needed to at least_ try_ to uncorrupt Saltio. And in order to do that...

"This is good." I smiled lightly at her. "Best I've ever had."

She smiled at the praise. "Thanks! But you should try out Breorn's." For a moment the bull looked down sheepishly, but it lasted only an instant before fading.

For a couple minutes we sat silently, sipping our respective drinks, until Saltio decided to stir up a conversation. "So, Amanthe, what did you do for work before coming here? To Orgrimmar, I mean?"

"Well, nothing. I guess I sort of just practiced my magic." True enough; it wasn't like I had a job in Grim Batol, not in the sense of the word she meant.

"Must've been hard times," Breorn said.

I shook my head. "Not really, to be honest. I got along just fine until I came here. So Saltio, what's it like over at Yetmak's?" I asked, changing the subject.

The cultist-in-secret shrugged. "It's good, I guess. Some of the potions sold there are a bit, well, alarming to say the least. I mean, there's one that makes you float, or turn into a skeleton for crying out loud!" She sipped her tea again. "However, we did get a really big customer yesterday. One of the Kingslayers came over."

I raised an eyebrow. "Wow, what was the occasion?"

She shrugged. "I don't know, that's the thing! I think it was one of their paladins. A draenei. He bought an elixir of strength. He was an easy-going guy, well, for a draenei, I mean." She frowned as she said the name of the race. "I think his name was Aruen." A smile split her face. "One of the _Kingslayers_, in at _my_ workplace! Lucky Garrosh didn't see him, though. Hero or no, he's well, a bit racist." She lowered her voice as she said the last part.

Breorn looked at Saltio and reached over a hand, leaning over the table slightly to clap her on the shoulder. I caught the hint of a wince on her mouth as he did. No wonder. She must've still been sore from the cultist training yesterday. "That's great news! I'm really happy for you." He sat back in his chair and turned to me after imbibing some of his remaining tea. He grabbed the jug and poured himself some more. "What about you? Anything happen over at Liwatha's?"

My stomach growled, reminding me that I hadn't eaten anything yet. I figured I'd tell Breorn; after all, the troll was suspicious, and he was a guard. It would do well for him to know. "Well, on Thursday there was a strange patient. His name was Ros'fon. He was catatonic, and babbled about corrupted claws and tainted wings and the like. Oh, and nightmares."

He rubbed his chin. "Hmm, odd. Ros'fon, you say? I can't say I've heard the name, but 'fon' among the trolls means an outcast, one who has distances himself from society. That sounds a bit ominous. He might be related to... ah, that's absurd."

Oh? "What's absurd?"

"Well, for a few weeks now, Saltio and I have been having nightmares daily."

She grunted. "Months. And it's not just _us_, either. Practically the entire Valley's been having them. The local priests and druids are looking into it, but they've gotten nowhere. Some of them are setting up wards on certain homes, but for the most part they're just trying to get to the bottom of this."

The hairs on the back of my neck stood up straight. This was _not_ good. Things pointed more and more towards something very, very bad in Orgrimmar. Nightmares on their own usually didn't mean anything. Three nightmares in a row? That could possibly be chalked up to my stress about being in Orgrimmar, however unlikely. But an entire Valley, for _months?_ Something was wrong. "I'm so sorry for you guys. I've been getting them too, almost as soon as I moved here. I just put up wards around my house earlier this morning. Don't know if they work yet, but if you want, I could put up some for you."

Breorn nodded. "Thank you. That would be much appreciated."

"Just one thing. Why didn't you warn me about the nightmares?"

Breorn smiled nervously. "To be honest, we didn't want to scare you away." My stomach growled again. "Oh, my apologies. Have you had anything to eat?"

I shook my head. "No, haven't had time today."

He stood. "Here, let me get you something." I didn't protest. Within a few moments I was thanking him for a piece of veal that I tore into.

"So, Breorn," I asked. "Think they're going to find out what's going on with all these nightmares?"

Saltio answered for him. "I don't think they are. I mean, they've been searching for months now. They'd have figured it out by now," she said between sips of her tea. Breorn didn't bother to answer after her beyond a short 'what she said'.

I grunted, suspicions beginning to form. "Think maybe it's got something to do with the druids, and the Green dragons? They're usually wrapped up in all this dream-nonsense."

They both shrugged, and spoke at the same time. "I don't know, maybe."

For a while, we continued to banter back and forth as the jug of tea slowly trickled into oblivion as we drank it. I tried to be especially nice to Saltio; I had to if I wanted to slow down the Hammer's taint as best I could. She didn't appear too different yet, but I couldn't be too sure. I didn't have access to the Twilight realm; I couldn't know for certain how far she was without it.

I set up the same wards around their home that I did to ward off nightmares. I didn't know yet if it would work, if my wards would be of the correct strength to repel the horrors of sleep, but I had to try. Besides, it could help Saltio. Eventually, I bid them farewell to go spy on the cult, and Saltio followed me close behind, both of us walking side by side without a word. Or in my case, an audible word.

_'Um, Selriona, would you happen to know anything that would cause the entire Valley of Wisdom's occupants to experience nightmares every night for months?'_

_'You're not serious.'_

_'I'm dead serious. I thought the Greens had contained the nightmare!'_

_'Maybe it's gotten out from wherever they're containing it?'_

I wanted to shake my head, but resisted, not wanting to risk confusing Saltio as to why I just suddenly decided to shake my head. _'No, I don't think so. If it was, there would be a lot more Green dragons here, trying to repair the problem from this end in addition to within the Dream. It's probably something else.'_

_'Can't rule that out, though.'_ I passed under the gates of Orgrimmar as Selriona continued to speak to me. _'Still a possibility.'_

For the next few minutes as Saltio and I trekked towards the cultist camp, noon approaching rapidly, a still, somewhat stale silence between us until the tents came into view.

I departed from the tauren, heading towards the higher-up class. "See you later, Saltio. Take care."

"You too!"

I entered the ring of tents to be stopped within seconds by Layalith. "It's about time you got here."

"I'm on time."

She snorted. "So you say. Follow me. Nil Sag'ma's told me to give you the standard robes for us, since you've joined. Come along, I suppose." She sighed and led me into a tent. She stepped over to a few boxes in the corner, looked over to me and whispered to herself. "Maybe a six..." She opened the crate and tossed a large mass of dark purple cloth at me, which I barely managed to catch in the small space. "Put those on, then meet me outside, newbie. I've got to get you up to speed, seeing as how you're probably too _incompetent_ to do it yourself." She huffed, and whirled out of the tent. I closed the flap, made sure nobody could see in, and put on the robes. Holding my normal civilian clothes, I looked around briefly for a place to hide them. I didn't trust them to not steal it. Eventually, I found a little nook in the tent's flaps, stuffed them there, and headed out to the mistress of scowling herself, Layalith.

"Oh, wonderful. Now, has anyone told you what's going on here?"

I shook my head. "No."

However impossible it should have been, the blood elf's scowl deepened. "_Figures._ Okay, I'm going to explain it to you, nice and slow." A twinge of anger rose in my chest. "We are planning, on the third day of Noblegarden, an elemental invasion. Ros'fon, head of the lower class, trains them especially in combat, so that they can help us spearhead the attack. Glidia heads the middle class. Ros'fon begins teaching his class the true nature of the Titans and the Old Gods, but Glidia teaches them it more in depth. And then there's _us_, the high class. Nil Sag'ma teaches us personally, having us prepare the elemental invasion and such. I had to take a few lower-downs to the Twilight Highlands recently to trap air elementals." She paused. "I've lost you, haven't I?" Layalith's remarks made me seethe at her, the anger feeling like it ate me from the inside out.

"Nope. Ros'fon teaches low, Glidia middle, Nil Sag'ma us, elemental invasion, Noblegarden. Got it." I fought the urge to roll my eyes. A slight chill of fear ran through me, making my hair stand on end. I knew what this was; Nil Sag'ma was close.

Layalith continued, but apparently she felt his presence too; her snarky tone lost its biting edge. "Right. So that's it. Today's the same as yesterday, but Nil Sag'ma's probably going to question your... abilities. Don't disappoint him. Last person who did ended up in Seer Liwatha's clinic." That thought sent a chill down my spine. _Ros'fon._ Nil Sag'ma _did_ that to him? _And Nil Sag'ma was coming for me?_

"Wow. Thanks for the heads up." The feeling of evil strengthened, coiling around my limbs and tightening around my throat. The hairs on my body, already standing on end, seemed to try and detach from my body. Layalith also felt this, taking a step back from me. The sensation strengthened, making it a struggle to breathe, let alone move. Thoughts that weren't mine raced about in my head; The sound of flame as it ate through a city, the delight of manipulating vast crowds to my every whim and will, schemes within schemes within schemes... "He's right behind me, isn't he?" I managed to squeak out. The blood elf nodded, walking backwards so fast she nearly tripped over herself.

The sinister aura lessened its grip on me, enough to let me wheel around and face Nil Sag'ma, the jets of flame on the back of his head ornament close enough to let me feel their heat. Now that he was so closed, I noticed how _tall_ he was, towering a head over me. His green eyes glinted wickedly, and his rumbling voice cut through my soul from so close. "Well, well, well. If it isn't the new one who can already control the power of twilight fire. I _am_ correct in assuming this is you, yes?"

I tried to speak, but only managed to stutter. Darting my eyes around, looking instinctively for a way to place some distance between the two of us, I noticed multiple other cultists had stopped what they did, looking to see what unfortunate soul Nil Sag'ma was about to slaughter. I knew what he had done to Ros'fon; I stood no chance. My attempt at speech only made Nil Sag'ma smile. "Ah, so I was correct."

How he gleaned that out of 'a-a-y-u-n-aaah' I will never know.

"I wish to see what you are capable of with twilight fire. Nobody in this camp has the ability to use such magic, you see. Not even I. I am curious to see what it can do." Mercifully, he took a step back, his aura of danger relaxing its constrictor hold on me. Once he was six meters away, he stopped, looking back at me, his voice as powerful from that distance as it was from right next to me. "Go ahead, hit me with the strongest blast of twilight fire you can." He opened his arms wide, obviously not worried in the least about what I could throw at him. "It's an easy shot. Take it, or _I _will. Remember, the strongest blast you can make. I'll be able to tell if you're holding back."

The coils of evil he gave off had slackened to enough to allow me to control my body properly, but as such every muscle in my body still screamed at me to _run_. But I knew that would be hopeless. I could feel it flowing off from the corrupt orc in front of me, the thick gouts of mana that raced about in his veins. I wouldn't get a step away. I brought up my mana, forming a ball of twilight flame. I continued to channel more and more of my mana into it, forcing me to race through mental calculations to prevent the magic from leaking away. The ball of flame in my left palm grew larger and larger until it was twice the size of my head.

Then I hurled the twilight pyroblast at Nil Sag'ma.

For a moment I saw a small flicker of alarm come over his face before he casually held out a hand, forming a spherical shell of shadows around him, warding him from shadow spells. The blast slammed into the shield, but, being not pure shadow, but something else entirely, it ripped right through the shadow ward, careening into the orc behind it.

Nil Sag'ma flew backwards a meter, clearly unprepared for the spell ignoring his wards, but landed on his feet, gravity momentarily suspending him in the air while he regained his footing amidst the blue-colored smoke. When the smoke cleared, I saw Nil Sag'ma's robes were singed black in places. He smoothed them out, his skin seemingly untouched save for a few burns here and there that he took care of with shadow mends. He looked back at me, his eyes meeting mine and rooting me in place. The entire world went silent. Everyone held their breath, waiting to see what he would do for being blasted like that.

Finally, he smiled, the expression just so _wrong_ on his face. "Excellent. It appears my theory was incorrect, fortunately. Back to work, little _blood elf._ For today, you've done well... enough." He turned around, and began walking toward the massive, dragon-sized tent, the ground smoking slightly where he stepped.

Once he was gone, I let out a breath that I hadn't been aware of holding. When I had blasted him, even if he had told me to, I was certain I was going to die. It was no secret to me now; Nil Sag'ma was powerful. My most powerful spell, a twilight pyroblast, barely even seemed to faze him. His radiated danger faded to nothing as he went further away, letting me think clearly. What worried me was that I had disproved his 'theory'. What was that? That I would be able to do any real harm to him?

Layalith walked forward. "By the Old Gods, you are lucky. Nil Sag'ma doesn't like it when we hold out on him when he tests our strength. The last one who _did_ hold out on him would be twenty-five today. He's a _very _powerful warlock, as you can no doubt tell." She turned on me, her scowl emerging from where it had hidden from Nil Sag'ma. "Well, what are you still standing around for? We've got an elemental invasion to be planning!"

"If you don't mind me asking, exactly how _is _this invasion going to look?" I asked, trying to find out any information I could work to my advantage.

Layalith sighed, placing her head in her palm, then looking back up at me. "Okay. On the third day of Noblegarden, we are going to send the middle-class in to place the elemental boxes that we are making in their proper spots. There'll be Earth elementals in the Valley of Spirits, Water in the Valley of Strength, Air in Wisdom, and Fire in Honor. The low-class will be sent in to help fight. They're the meat for the grinder." My blood turned to ice. _That was Saltio's group__. _If I couldn't get her out of the cult by the invasion, roughly a month in the future, she was likely going to die.

... Damn it, I've only got a month to sabotage the cult! I had to figure out some way to not only disperse of the cult, but also of any corrupting thing they'd done. Who knew how deeply they'd rooted themselves into Orgrimmar? I needed to pull them up by the roots. Just getting them all killed wouldn't be enough. I needed to know everything they'd done.

"And meanwhile, we are approaching from the Valley of Spirits to attack them. Well? Is that good enough for you?" asked Layalith with a growl.

I nodded. "Yes, thank you," I resisted the urge to return her snarl.

For the rest of the day, I did the same thing I did earlier, the fear radiating from Nil Sag'ma rising and falling as I changed my proximity to him. Several times I accidentally found myself looking him in the eye, and I froze up, terror grasping me by my throat until I managed to divert my gaze. I saw clearly how the leader of the cultists kept a careful, hawk-like watch over the boxes that no doubt contained bound elementals, preventing me from getting close enough to sabotage them. Within the cultist camp itself, my ability to do much of anything was heavily, _heavily_, limited.

I growled as I helped a goblin with organizing elementium dust. I couldn't do anything of note here. Just hide a few things here and there that they easily replaced. I needed to do something that would _hurt_ them, but what? I couldn't tell the guard; what would they see me as? Telling them would lead to a lot of questioning sure to get me revealed entirely. But I had to do _something!_

As I changed my robes back for civilian clothes and the meeting drew to an end, I came to the conclusion that I _had_ to enter the twilight realm. Nil Sag'ma didn't spend all his time guarding the boxes, but when he wasn't someone else was. He guarded something else in his mammoth tent. There had to be something of key importance in there. But if I wanted to gain access to it, I needed the twilight realm.

Saltio ran up next to me as we returned to Orgrimmar, or rather, hobbled up next to me. "By the Light, what happened to you?" I asked.

"Ach. I didn't do so well in training today. Ros'fon's pushing us hard."

I nodded. "Not surprising. There's an elemental invasion planned to be carried out within a month." She stumbled again, making me grab her by her arm. "Here, let me help with that." I called upon the Light, letting the power flow through my hands, draining my energy, and wove it into a healing spell. I cast it at Saltio, making her legs mend where they had been hit. She grimaced, but stood up straight afterwards.

"Thanks. That's... that's a lot better."

I shrugged, then forced the words out through my mouth. "What are friends for?"

She smiled. "Yeah... what are friends for?" I looked her way as she echoed what I said, but I didn't say anything. If I was going to save her, she needed for me to at least _pretend_ to be her friend. We headed back towards our homes, talking between ourselves about what we had gone through.

"I threw a twilight pyroblast at Nil Sag'ma."

Her eyebrows shot up. "You _what_?"

I shrugged. "I'm not sure. He wanted to see what I was capable of, I guess. Hardly did shit to him, though. Lucky thing, too. If I had actually hurt him..." I didn't finish the sentence. We both knew what I meant.

"So, what? He just stood still and let you take a shot at him?"

I nodded. "That's exactly what he did. He took the full power of the pyroblast right to his chest, and he walked off without a break in his step."

"Doesn't that seem a bit _off_ to you? I mean, he didn't ward it, right?" He actually did, but the shadow ward didn't do shit. "Taking a hit like _that_ to the chest, full force, well..."

I shook my head. "Not at all. Just being around him... Light. I couldn't move. I wouldn't be surprised if his robes had some enchantments on them."

She nodded her head. "Yeah. Welp, I'm gonna have some explaining to do for Breorn. Wish me luck." We stopped the conversation, arriving at the gates to Orgrimmar, and soon went our separate ways.

_'Okay, Selriona? You there?'_ No response. I concluded that she slept. I entered my room and began to look around. "Ialion?" I found him sitting on his nest, looking at me curiously, then happily.

"Hey, Amanthe!" He flew over to me, making several loops in the air as he sailed over, the motions making me dizzy. "So? So? Find anything out?"

I sighed, moving to rummage through the cupboards for something to eat. "As a matter of fact, I did. Several things. You know the nightmares we've been having?"

Ialion shuddered. "How could I not? They're _horrible_."

"Yeah, well, we aren't the only ones who've been having them. It turns out the entire Valley's been having nightmares for months."

Ialion's jaw dropped open, letting me see his forked tongue clear as day. "_Months?_ I take it back, this just got a lot more interesting."

"That's not all, either. You know Nil Sag'ma?"

He nodded, sitting on the table as I sat in a chair. "Yeah, the scary, corrupt orc that leads the _cultists_. What about him?"

"Well, he _may_ have something to do with the nightmare spell over Orgrimmar. He arrived a few months ago, and the nightmares started a few months ago. For anyone else, that would be a coincidence, but Nil Sag'ma also made a troll babble deliriously about nightmares."

The whelpling gulped as I bit down into a buttered loaf of bread. "Well... that's... bad."

"You're telling me. Any theories about him?"

Ialion pondered this for a moment, then shook his head. "Nope. Nothing. What about that tauren?"

"Still too soon to know how she's holding up. She's only been in for two days. Her corruption wouldn't take hold that fast. Not to say I'm going to stop helping her, of course. I need to do anything I can. What's really bad is that I can't sabotage the cult."

He seemed to understand what I meant by that. "Amanthe, you _have_ to tell someone. Anyone! Make up a story. Say you're investigating on behalf of Silvermoon or something, but you need to tell the Orgrimmar guard about this, _fast!_"

"But how'll that look? A blood elf joins up, and within three days their plans are exposed?"

The Twilight whelpling sighed. "I don't know. I'm gonna go to nest. See you in the morning!"

I smiled back at him. "Yeah. Let's hope those wards I put up work."

"Yeah." He fluttered back up to his nest and curled up on himself. I looked at him for a while as I continued to eat my food, his scaled flanks rising and falling, making his wings move with them. Once I was done, I bathed, and went to sleep.

That night, I had no nightmares.

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><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<strong>


	6. Chapter 6:Enter Twilight

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Massive thanks to my beta, Dusty the Umbravita!**

**Chapter published 4/15/12**

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><p><span>Amanthe<span>

I reflexively brought my hands up, as if to ward off a blow, feeling I should have had a nightmare. When I didn't recall any fear at all from the previous night, I smiled. I groaned, pulled the covers off me, and pondered on what this meant for the wards. Whatever was causing these nightmares was right in Orgrimmar. It couldn't have been in the Emerald dream, else I would've needed wards _there_ to stop the nightmares. It may have been because of it, but whatever it was, it wasn't _in_ the realm of the Green Flight. It couldn't be internal, otherwise the wards wouldn't have worked. I swung my legs around and got to my feet, looking for Ialion. The whelpling still dozed in his nest, his flank rising and falling gently, eyes fluttering under their lids.

"Mrrph... Kilasion... leggo... the marrow..." he muttered between snores.

I smiled at his speech as I got out a breakfast for myself; a couple eggs, some water, and a loaf of bread with jelly. I began to eat it, and began thinking to my draconic friend.

_'Hey, you there?' _I asked her.

_'Yeah, did I miss anything?'_

_'Well, _somebody_ was taking a nap when I contacted them yesterday, so I wasn't able to talk to them about everything I wanted to.'_

_'You sleep over three times more than I do, I wouldn't be talking!'_

I bit into the fried egg, tasting the yolk meshing with the whites. _'Yeah, yeah. So, let's get the big thing out of the way first. The cult is planning an elemental invasion in one month.'_

I heard Selriona groan at the same time Ialion rolled over and muttered something about bad aim. _'Well. Shit.'_

_'Yeah, just about sums it up. I'm thinking of going to tell the guard, but I don't know. The invasion might not be all that they're doing. If we take them out _now _we might never know what else they've got hidden here.'_

_'Yeah, true. But all the same, you really _should_ tell somebody. The cult's been hit pretty hard, what with the Cataclysm, and then_ us_ starting to hunt them down.__ Hey, how're the nightmares?'_

_'Great. They're wonderful, the wards worked. I slept like a rock. So it's gotta be coming from outside, not something planted in everyone's house.' _I finished my eggs and proceeded onto the toast. _'What could be _causing_ it? I know Nil Sag'ma is linked to it, but how? Sure, he radiates fear around him, but nowhere near in a large enough area.'_

I could practically envision the Twilight dragon shaking her head. _'Wish I knew. Let's start practicing with the twilight realm. It'll give some answers.'_

I nodded, knowing full well she couldn't see me. _'Great, let's get started then.' _I drank some of my water, and stood away from the table, drawing twilight energy into my hands. I concentrated hard, doing my best to keep the energy in one place, multiple calculations flying through my mind as the energy began to flow to one side, then the other as I balanced it out, the energy wobbling back and forth in my hand.

_'Keep the energy stable, and position it into a... well, have you heard of the Klein Bottle? Apparently, Nalestrasza has.'_

_'That gnomish invention. Made by Wilfred Klein, a bottle with a side that, if you traced it, you'd go along both sides at once. It has two chambers, with one leading into the other without creating a hole in either of the walls.' _I managed to send through the math flying past my head. Knowing what she meant, I began to manipulate the energy into the form she said, before I could lose my grip on it. The energy vanished out of my hands before a shimmering, purple portal opened up infront of me, bright stars and violet clouds against a black canvas visible inside it. The edges of the portal twisted around. I still had to keep the energy together, the portal not yet open, just visible, but it was less strenuous.

_'Okay. Now, reach out and touch it. Several command runes will come up in your mind. You need to provide their opposite, like healing commands to damage commands. Go ahead, try it.' _I did what she told me and reached out a hand, touching the space occupied the developing Twilight portal. Instantly I saw a magical inscription in my mind, the PHASE command. I began to travel through the runes, until I accidentally placed a reversal command with a blast command. The twilight portal slipped away, disappearing with a slight _pop_.

"Damn it!" My outburst, combined with the sound of the portal vanishing, made Ialion stir in his sleep, yawn and briefly stop snoring, but otherwise remain unconscious. _'Didn't work.'_

_'Keep trying. The answer has to be in the twilight realm. I know it.'_

_'Yeah. I'll be able to see where the corruption is centered.' _I pondered for a moment. _'Ten gold coins says that it's centered on Nil Sag'ma.'_

_'I'd lose that bet.'_

I laughed into the link._ 'Yeah, I know. Okay. Let's try this again,' _I said. For the next few minutes, I manipulated the mana in me to open a portal to the twilight realm, finishing my breakfast in the process, but each time something happened and I failed. Once, I nearly opened it, but I lost the strength to hold the twilight energy any longer. Another time, I accidentally called up shadows instead of twilight energy. And yet another time, the twilight energy became a fireball that I had to quickly dissipate.

Another twilight portal snapped shut, waking up Ialion. The whelpling yawned, smacked his fangs together several times, and rolled over on his back. He groaned a few times, opened an eye, and rolled back over onto his stomach to look at me.

"Hey, Amanthe. Guess what I dreamed about?"

I 'hazarded' a guess. "You were arguing with your brother Kilasion over some bone marrow, and when he attacked you he had bad aim with his blasts?"

"How did you know?" he asked, all residue of sleep suddenly gone from him as he bolted upright, sitting on his haunches and gazing out at me.

"You talk in your sleep."

He narrowed his pupils into tight slits. "I don't talk in my sleep."

I couldn't resist. "You snore, too," I said calmly, smiling.

"I do not!" he shrieked. He turned his head away, but kept looking at me with one eye. "How badly?" he asked timidly.

"Not too bad, don't worry. You're not shaking the house or anything."

_'So, any luck with the portals?'_

_'Some, but I haven't gotten one open yet. I'll get it today, though, I think. Gotta go to Liwatha's soon, though.'_

_'Good luck.' _With that, the dull pressure above my ears faded.

Ialion yawned again, flying off his shelf and landing on the table on all fours. "So. Gonna tell anyone about the invasion?"

I sighed. "I don't know. I mean, of course I'm going to tell someone before it happens, but if they attack the cult _now_ then we won't know if they have anything elsewhere in Orgrimmar. Nil Sag'ma will hide stuff if we attack. But if I wait too long, then they won't have the time to prepare for the invasion, so the cult will be able to do more damage."

"I think you should _at least_ tell that tauren guard you're neighbors with. You need options!"

I nodded, getting out of my seat to get the still sleep-addled Ialion something to eat. "Yeah. I guess Breorn looks trustworthy enough." Truth be told, part of the reason I hadn't told anyone was because I still didn't fully _trust_ the Horde. "But if I tell him about the cult, then I'll have to tell him about Saltio. How's he going to handle that? I mean, I can come up with something," I said, placing some pork and water out. "But he'll press."

Ialion padded over to the meat and looked up at me. "You gotta try."

I nodded. "Yeah. I have to at least try." I took a deep breath, steeling my nerves. "Wish me luck, Ialion."

"Good luck!" he said, sitting back on his haunches on slowly wagging his tail. I closed the door behind me, and took a deep breath. I walked over to Breorn and Saltio's home, raised my hand, and knocked gently. When there was no response, I did so more forcefully. As I went in for a third knock, the door opened and I conked Breorn on the forehead.

"Ow! Nice to see you too."

I laughed nervously. "Heh, sorry about that. Hey, is Saltio in there?" Please let her not be.

Luckily, he shook his head. "No, she left for work a few minutes ago. Why, are you looking for her?"

I frowned. "No. Listen, I need to talk to you. It's important. May I come in?"

Breorn stepped aside, granting me entry. "Be my guest. Be quick, though. My shift is soon." I stepped inside, and the tauren closed the door behind me. "Would you like anything to eat? Drink?"

"No, thanks for the offer. Listen, um, can you promise me something?"

"Sure?"

"Okay. Don't tell Saltio about this, okay? I wouldn't want her to get the wrong ideas about me." Breorn creased his eyes, trying to understand what I meant. I took a deep breath."You know about the Twilight's Hammer? How there's activity in Orgrimmar?"

"Yes?"

"Alright. I need you to not jump to conclusions. I'm spying on them."

He frowned, hands drumming by his side as he sat down, as if grasping a weapon that wasn't there. "And I should believe you... why?" he asked with tension in his voice.

"Okay. There's a group of them to the south-east of Orgrimmar. They're planning an elemental invasion on the third day of Noblegarden. I know you probably don't - "

He held up a hand, silencing me, and spoke carefully and deliberately. "I know."

I jerked back. "You _know?_"

He nodded. "Yes. A few weeks back, we received a tip off. We sent out our scouts, and sure enough, there they were. We're ready to pounce on them any moment, but the captain of our guard, Malg, is telling us to wait. He wants to see if we get any more tip offs about any other plans they've got. On the second day of the Noblegarden celebration, while they are busy getting everything ready, we will pounce on them." He turned his eyes on me. "I believe you when you say you're spying on them. After all, your report matches the one we heard. Anything else we should be worried about?"

_Your mate is with them_.

I shook my head. I couldn't bring myself to tell him about Saltio. I simply couldn't. I knew I was just making it worse later on, but I couldn't find the strength to do so. And _she_ couldn't be the spy; she just joined recently. Nil Sag'ma hadn't recognized her. Unless she'd changed her appearance, but Breorn would've noticed that. "No, nothing. So, wait, there's _another_ spy in the cult? Any ideas who it might be? I need to team up with them. I can't sabotage them from the inside. Their security is too tight." _Nil Sag'ma's _security was too tight.

"I don't know. But you say there's nothing else the cult is planning?"

"Not that I know of, no."

"Hmm. I'll tell this to Malg. I personally don't agree with what he's doing. Perhaps I can make him see reason." He stood up from his seat and moved over to me, looking down. "Amanthe, if you learn anything about them, anything at all, tell me right away. I'm trusting you for this."

"Got it."

_I am a horrible person__._

"Hey," I asked. "Did my wards work? Did you have nightmares?"

A smile split Breorn's face. "No. Thank you, Amanthe. The gesture is truly appreciated. Is there anything else you need?"

I shook my head. "No, I have to get going for Liwatha's soon. I just wanted to let you know about that."

"So, wait, that's where you were running off on the weekends? At noon?" I saw where he was going with this. He was suspicious of Saltio. I had to protect her, even if just for a little while. I had to try and save her.

"No, I occupied my time until it was time to go spy on them. It's in afternoon. I know where you're going with this, and no. Light only knows where Saltio goes. Anyway, I need to get to Seer Liwatha's soon. Thanks for believing me. The second day of Noblegarden is on a Saturday, right?"

"Yes, it is. Like I said, we're going to jump them then."

"Good. I'll be sure not to go on that day, then." I wheeled around and left Breorn's home, heading for my job with Seer Liwatha. That had gone notably better than I had expected it. Another spy in the Twilight's Hammer? This was too good. If I could find out this second person, then I'd be able to do some actual sabotaging. But that left the question of who it was. It likely wasn't anyone in the lower class; Breorn said they had received the tip about the invasion _weeks_ ago. By now they'd have been promoted, no doubt about that. That just left the question of whether or not the person was in the middle or the high class, where I could talk to them more easily. I couldn't decide who it was. I wanted to hope they were in the high class; after all, they'd have an easier time accessing information. But I didn't know how often they 'promoted' somebody.

If I could get into the twilight realm, I'd likely have little trouble spotting the spy; just look for the person without Old God corruption. Which just made it all the more important for me to be able to open a portal to that plane of existence successfully.

I arrived in Liwatha's clinic, entering soundlessly; I knew that she expected me from the previous times I'd been here. This time there was only one patient here, a tauren with black fur that contrasted sharply against his white horns. He didn't appear to have any injuries, but then his fur may have been simply covering them up. I walked into the back of the room where I knew the Seer to be.

"Amanthe, welcome. I assume you've seen who needs treatment, yes?"

I nodded to the Seer as she stood up from behind her desk, robes ruffling as she did so. "Yeah. What's wrong with him? I couldn't make it out."

She frowned. "He has a mild skull fracture. I've already checked him over; he has a concussion, but I've been able to treat that, and there's no brain damage as far as I can tell. It's a mild fracture. I'm out of strength to call upon An'she, and I've given him whatever medicines would help. If you would?"

"Of course, Seer." I turned around and paced towards the tauren, placing a hand over his forehead.

He flinched as I did so. "Yes?"

"I'm healing your skull. Try not to move too much. Head injuries aren't easy to heal with magic." I let the Light flow through my hands, willing it to flow into his head. But drained from my expenditures on opening portals to the twilight realm - and failing to _keep_ them open - I could only keep heal him for a few moments before I had to rest, thirst tugging at my lips and making my tongue feel like leather. I stepped back. "Alright. That should do it. I couldn't heal it all the way, though. Try to avoid any head injuries for the next three weeks while it heals, okay?"

He stood and bowed. "You have my thanks. Pass them on to Seer Liwatha too, please. I've already paid, so you don't need to worry about that."

"Thanks, I will." Once I said that, he passed out of the clinic, pushing the curtain aside.

I walked back to Liwatha. "Alright, I've healed him, but I wasn't able to entirely. I'm drained. He'll heal on his own, though, I can tell that much. He told me to pass on his thanks to you. He did pay, right?"

The priestess looked up from an accounting book on her desk, a petite little thing with chickenscratch handwriting in it that even my Orb of Deception couldn't translate. "Yes he did. Thank you for passing on the information."

"Liwatha, have you been having nightmares here?" I already knew the answer, but I wanted to be sure.

She frowned. "So you have started having them, too?" She sighed. "I am helping others attempt to track down their origin when I am not tending to this clinic. So far, our attempts have hit a dead end. Those of the druidic arts tried to follow the nightmares through the Emerald dream to their source, but were unable to do so, for the nightmares came from within the victims after they were afflicted _with_ an outside source." She leaned back in her chair, letting out a despairing sigh. "We've placed wards against this outside source in several homes, but the nightmares always break through after a few nights." _What? Oh, fuck._ "It's like a constant aura, hammering against the protective magic until it breaks down. The wards aren't strong integrity wise, so it's a weak aura."

"Wait, they break _through_ the wards? Damn it, I placed wards around my house, too. Just when I thought I'd solved the problem." Of course, I could just re-strengthen them.

Seer Liwatha smiled wisely in my direction. "Yes, it's quite a pickle, isn't it? No doubt these nightmares are a diversion tactic of who or whatever is inducing them." Nil Sag'ma. But if I told her that, she'd ask how I knew. Convincing Breorn that I was spying on the cult was simple; my report matched to the one he was told by 'Spy B'. Liwatha, on the other hand...

Ignorant of my musings, she continued. "However, if we can follow these nightmares to their source, then no doubt we can find out whatever else they are doing. Currently, we are trying to find where the nightmarish aura radiates from, but it's impossible. The source appears to be in three different places at once, and when we went to the midpoint of them all, we found nothing. We've figured out recently that the source is not three places in actuality, but a diffraction spell is making it seem that way. So we've got no lead, and no idea on how to track down the source."

She closed her eyes, waited a moment, and opened them. "Maybe you can help us?"

I shook my head. I already had to search for the other spy in the cult, not to mention continue pretending to be in it, as well as keep Ialion from getting himself in trouble, _and_ entering the twilight realm. "No, I'm not too good with those kind of things. Best of luck, though."

The rest of the day passed with relative slowness. Nobody else came in, so Seer Liwatha and I sat around, waiting for somebody to come in, talking amongst ourselves about all sorts of different things, such as the weather, or strange events that had happened. At one point, she brought up my mom. I grimaced slightly, and told her that she was dead. She is. She died when Arthas rampaged through Lordaeron. I've had time to get over it, though. My dad, I don't know _where_ he is. Supposedly he was still in Dalaran, but I don't remember I'd seen him.

Time passed, and soon enough it was afternoon, time for me to take my leave and make sure Ialion hadn't done anything dumb. He was, after all, only months old.

"See you tomorrow, Liwatha."

She gave me my pay and curtseyed to me as I pushed past the curtain. "Indeed, Amanthe. Take care." She vanished back into the clinic, likely watching over it, and as I turned a corner I thought I saw someone else enter.

The sun tried to beat through the cloud cover, but failed to pierce the afternoon blanket. An unseasonably cold wind swept through the streets, sending me into a fit of shivering as I made my way back to my house. A few of the citizens of Orgrimmar had prepared for this, and sported sweaters to keep them sheltered from the wind. I, of course, had no such shelter. At last, I lightly stepped into my house, closing the door and letting out a hiss as my teeth chattered against one another.

I found Ialion sitting in the center of the table, looking at me with a disappointed face that seemed to convey that I'd done something along the lines of stepping on his tail. He wore a frown, and his eyes narrowed at me accusingly. Despite the fact that I was five times larger than him, I couldn't help but get the image of a tall guard looking down at me.

"Okay, I give up, what did I do?"

He huffed, and maintained his 'you fail' face. He spread his tiny wings out to their full length before letting them fall limply to the tabletop. "Are you forgetting something?"

"Um, no, I don't think so. Why?"

Ialion raised himself onto his hind legs and took off into the air, fluttering in one place as menacingly as he could. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth, gone the moment he noticed it. "Oh, I don't know, how maybe to you forgot to open your eyes because I'm COMING AT YOU!" Before I could comprehend what he said he charged at me, slamming into my head. The shock at what he just did let him throw me to the ground, the Twilight whelpling smirking mischievously as he 'pinned' me.

I sighed. "Ialion... you really _are_ a kid." He stuck out a forked tongue between his fangs and got off of me. "I need to work on opening a twilight portal. Can you please not distract me?"

He twisted around in mid air to perch on his shelf, pouting. "Sorry, Amanthe. But it's just so _boring_ here when you're out! There's nothing to do at a-a-a-all."

I walked over and patted him behind the horns. "Yeah yeah, I know, Ialion. I know. Hey, when I open the portal, you can come with me, all right?"

He perked up at this. "Then what are we waiting for? Let's open a portal to the twilight realm!" He flew off his shelf and hovered by my side.

"Hold on, Ialion. I need to drink something." I went and filled couple glasses from the cupboard with water. "Hmm, I'm going to have to go to the market soon." I downed the glasses of water, feeling them metabolize into my mana. Once I was done, I let out a little sigh, a bit light headed from drinking so much water so quickly.

"Okay, Ialion. Let's do this. And what did you mean by 'let's' open a portal?"

"Well, I was thinking, maybe if I breathed some fire into the portal, that would help you keep it stable? The twilight energy would help, wouldn't it?"

I shrugged. "Worth a shot. Wait for me to say 'now' and then help out, okay?" He nodded, but said nothing. "Okay. Let's do this." Like before, I began to bring up twilight energy from myself, forming it into a ball between my hands, struggling to keep it together. Several times it started to slip away from me, but I held it in one place. _No. I can do this.  
><em>

I molded the energy into the shape of a bottle inverted on itself, and watched as the starry expanse opened up in my house. "Now." Ialion opened his maw next to the portal, coils of blue flame seeping out of his mouth into the portal. I could feel the psuedo-portal stabilizing as it absorbed the energy, and I stumbled my way through the command lines, opening a portal to the twilight realm. The starry canvas of the portal rippled and faded, turning into a pure black core. I dropped my hands to my knees, panting heavily.

"Come on, Amanthe! It might close any second!"

I fought down nausea and looked at the portal. "All right. Let's go in." I stepped into the portal, Ialion right behind me.

Blackness overcame my vision. I couldn't see my hand if I poked my eye with it. I floated in the void for a few seconds, worrying that maybe I did it wrong. Then the portal vomited me into the twilight realm, Selriona's son beside me.

My room was covered in a violet haze, seeming to seep out of the floorboards and permeate the air. I moved my hand, thick coils of shadows twisting about it, and the air rippled like a pond. Ialion shivered and moaned. "Oooh, that feels sooo good."

I chuckled. "I bet it does." The twilight realm sent shivers down my spine, every noise echoing about me. I heard a _crack_, and turned around to see that the portal had closed. "Thanks for the help, Ialion. Come on. We've got corruption to find."

Quietly, as if he were sleepy, he nodded his head. "Hey Amanthe, you're glowing."

I looked down at myself. Nothing. I remembered what that was. "Yeah, you can see my life-essence. I can't see it. Ialion, if I stop glowing, let me know, will you? It means I'm dying."

He nodded. "Gotcha. Welp, where to?"

"The cultist camp. We can snoop around there without being caught, now." I opened the front door and stepped out, not caring that to everyone in the physical realm it looked like the door opened by itself. Once Ialion flew out, I closed it. The clouds were tinted purple, and the glow of the sun behind them was also violet. The wind that made me so cold in the physical realm barely registered in the twilight realm. Wisps of shadows curled around buildings and stones, rippling and pulsing about. "Well, let's get going."

We both started to head out of Orgrimmar. I couldn't help but look around at how different Orgrimmar appeared through the twilight realm, like somebody had painted the entire place purple. Beyond the two of us there wasn't a single living thing, but several times a rock suddenly decided that it wanted to fly, no doubt somebody in the physical realm kicking it. A few footsteps appeared in the softer parts of the city, where the ground wasn't solid stone. A few times I saw violet blobs moving about, but they were few and very far between; the cultists.

Outside Orgrimmar, there wasn't much. Ialion kept up with my pace easily, being given energy from the twilight realm. Lucky him; I got nothing from it beyond the ability to see corruption.

He narrowed his eyes. "Is that..."

"Is what?"

"Is that the cultist camp?"

I squinted in the direction he looked, but couldn't quite make out what he saw. "Probably. You've got better eyes than I do." A few moments later, the array of tents came into sight for me, too; a violet halo surrounded them, signifying their Old God taint. As we approached, I got a feeling of melancholy, like I was in a ghost town. The violet glow of Old God corruption did nothing to me as I passed through it, hardly even obscuring my eyesight. Tent flaps were left open, but what caught our attention most of all was the enormous tent overlooking them all, as tall and wide as Selriona.

"That's his tent."

Ialion turned to look at me. "Who?"

"Nil Sag'ma, the leader of the cultists. The one who's giving the Valley of Wisdom nightmares. That's his tent." Something scurried by me, and I jumped to see a path being cut through the fine sand of Durotar.

A snake passed through in the physical realm.

"Let's go in!" said Ialion, who began speeding off to it.

"Ialion!" I ran after him, but with him in the twilight realm, I had no chance of catching up to him. Luckily for me, he stopped outside the tent. "Ialion! What were you thinking?"

"What?" he asked with big eyes. "What's going to hurt me here?" I didn't answer. He had a point. He threw his head in the air with a smug air about him. "Thought so. Come on, let's peek inside!"

"Hold up. What if he's inside? To him, it'll look like the flap suddenly opens by itself! I think he's already suspicious of me enough, with me being able to use twilight flame. He'll put two and two together. Not to mention my footsteps..."

"Then use that mind-vision thingy you priests have on me. I'll fly in, and I won't leave any footprints. If he's that smart, he'll know it can't be you, since you _would_ leave footprints."

Hesitantly, I nodded. "Okay. Go in, I'll look through your eyes. This spell is easy enough, anyway." He nodded, and began to scoot under the tent. I cast the spell, and began to see what he saw.

Looking through the eyes of another is always unsettling at first. They have different eyesight than you no matter what, so you see things either a little worse or better than you are used to, not to mention that whatever they're focused on, so are you. With Ialion, his eyesight was leaps and bounds better than mine. The edges of his vision seemed to compress slightly, letting him see a little ways behind him. Everything was so much sharper through his eyes, every speck of dust and its shadow in clear focus. He came up under the tent, and the world went red.

The inside of the tent, instead of being covered in the violet taint of the Old Gods, was covered with a faint red mist. What that meant, I didn't know, but I remembered learning. It was right on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn't try to remember now; I had to keep my attention on maintaining the spell.

The inside of Nil Sag'ma's tent was surprisingly barren. I'd expected him better prepared. There were a few boxes around, which I knew to contain elementals for the invasion he planned. Several machines of a foreign nature - spiky, angular, sinister looking, and patterned black and green - stood at several places around the tent. One slightly denser but still sparse blob of red mist moved around between the machines. I had no doubt; this was Nil Sag'ma. He stopped once Ialion entered, and I could imagine him staring at the tent flap. The red mist approached Ialion, and he flew away. The red blob seemed to crouch down at the flap, making me hold my breath, but after a few moments of him no doubt looking for a footprint, he turned back to his machines. I was suddenly happy Ialion had chosen to have me use mind vision on him.

Ialion fluttered around the perimeter of the tent several more times, revealing nothing else, then scurried out of the tent. I broke the spell, blinking several times as my eyesight suddenly worsened. "Well, Ialion? What do you make of that?"

He shook his head. "I have no idea. There's no Old God corruption in there at _all__!_ What's the red mist supposed to be? What kind of corruption is that?"

"I know it, it's right on the tip of my tongue, but I can't quite get it. Let me see..." I delved into my memories, to the ones where I had a discussion with Selriona about the different types of corruption she could see in the twilight realm, going in order through the memory so I didn't skip anything.

_"Well, there's several different types I've seen. Of course, there's Old God corruption, which is a violet color. Go figure." _Yes, I know it's Old God corruption, what did she say next?

_"I've actually seen black mist once, when I had a run-in with a darkened Naaru. I'm not one-hundred percent certain, but that seems to be how void energy manifests in there."_

_"I've never seen arcane corruption myself, but Murdonia and Pallasion have. They say it looks teal."_ Oh no. It couldn't be. Old God, void, and arcane. That left only one thing. By the Light, it couldn't be...

_"And lastly, demonic corruption leaves a red mist."_

I tore myself out of my memories. My heart seemed to slow down. "Oh no."

Ialion looked at me, worried. "Amanthe? What's going on?" My heart began to speed back up, thundering in my ears.

"Oh no. Oh no, this is not good." I wheeled back to look at the tent, suddenly picturing it in a completely different manner, backing up from it. Who knew what it was about to do? "Oh nonononono, Ialion, we need to go. Right now!" I began to run back for the gates of Orgrimmar, my footprints being blown away by the wind in the physical realm. Ialion flew beside me full sprint. I didn't dare stop despite how much my lungs burned and pleaded for air, instead shifting into the shadows so I wouldn't need as much air.

"Amanthe!" Ialion called once I reached the gates of Orgrimmar. "What's wrong?"

I forced myself to stop, my body leaving shadowform. I fell to my knees, coughing and taking gasping breaths. Ialion landed beside me and patted my back with a wing.

"Hey, take it easy. What's wrong?"

"Red mist," I managed to wheeze out.

"Yeah, it's red. What about... Amanthe. What corruption is red?"

"Demonic corruption. Demonic corruption shows up as red mist. Nil Sag'ma's is corrupted by the _Legion__._ Damn it!"

"The _Legion?_ As in, the _Burning_ Legion? That big army of demons led by a crazy titan?"

"Yeah, that one. They got to Nil Sag'ma, corrupted him, and now... by the Light, what would the Legion want with a group of the Twilight's Hammer?"

The whelpling shook his head. "I don't know. Why wouldn't the Old Gods just tell the cultists that they're being used?"

"Maybe he's blocking them, somehow? Or he hasn't cast the Old God communication spell on them. That's probably it. But I think I know why they'd want the cult. Think about it; lots of mortals willing to die for a cause? They could manipulate them, but for _what__?_ Why go to all the trouble to manipulate the Twilight's Hammer when you can just invade yourselves? There's gotta be something else."

Ialion shook his head. "I don't know. But I do know this. You _have_ to tell Broodmother."

I stood up, catching my breath. "Yeah. Yeah, she needs to be kept updated on this. Things are starting to escalate." _'Hey, you awake?'_

A pause. _'Yeah, what's going on?'_

_'Well, Ialion and I are in the twilight realm.'_

_'That's great!'_

_'Well, define great. Things aren't as simple as we thought. You know Nil Sag'ma? Big, scary orc that could kill me with a flick of his wrist? He's not corrupted by the Old Gods.'_

_'What? But, he's leading the cultists there. How can he not be corrupted by them?'_

_'Because the Burning Legion got to him first. He's - they're - using the Twilight's Hammer for something. A distraction, maybe? But for what?' _Ialion and I began to walk back to our house.

_'The _Legion? _Oh, __well that's... interesting. Does anyone else know about this yet?'_

_'Just Ialion and I. We found out not too long ago. Damn it, damn it! If the Legion's doing something... damn it, they're _worse _than the Old Gods. Maybe not more evil, but certainly a lot more powerful military wise.'_

_'Oh crap, this is not good. Keep an eye on Nil Sag'ma. If the demons are trying something again, well... all the times they've invaded, it's always been a close call. Hey, does the guard know about the cult?'_

_'Yeah, apparently there's a second spy there. Don't know who it is, but I'm determined to find out. And I'm going to go tell Breorn about Nil Sag'ma.'_

_'Good, good. Titans help us all.'_

_'It's only one hundred cultists, though! They're not exactly a force to be reckoned with. Why even bother?'_

_'I don't know, I don't know...__' _she mused, her presence in my mind fading to nothing.

Eventually, we got to the house. I opened the door, and Ialion flew in. "Aren't you coming in?"

I shook my head. "No, there's just one thing I need to check on first. I'll be quick, I promise." He frowned, but nodded. I closed the door and walked towards Saltio's home. I knocked on the door, waiting for it to open 'by itself'. It did, and I crept in before it closed on me. I stopped once inside the two tauren's home, and began to look around. I found a two-person bed, with one indent on one side, and a second one appeared as someone no doubt went back to it. But it was the first indent that made my breath catch in my throat. It was tiny, barely noticeable, but there it was.

A tiny violet glow in the sleeping groove.

"No, Saltio, no..." I groaned.

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><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<strong>


	7. Chapter 7:Temperamental Spouse

**Disclaimer:I do not ****Warcraft or its sequels, Blizzard does. I do, however, currently own a particularly nasty case of the common cold. Damn it.**

**Massive thanks to my beta, Dusty the Umbravita.  
><strong>

**Chapter published 4/21/12**

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><p><span>Amanthe<span>

I shuffled my pack with my shoulders, and my pack shuffled back.

Strictly speaking, it wasn't my pack that did the shuffling, rather Ialion inside it as we went to the markets in the Drag, his snout up against the air holes in it, which were large enough for him to breathe, but not large enough for his scale color to peek through. His tail rested against my back, the means by which he communicated with me.

"You won't eat the food I put in there, right?" I whispered to him in Draconic, so soft nobody but him could've heard me.

_Thump_, went his tail against my back, the signal for yes.

I smiled. "Good." I entered a shop where the scent of meat hung heavily in the air. A male orc in a sleeveless brown vest stood in the middle, surrounded on all sides by differing cuts of meat; sausages, pork, strips of bacon, and several kinds I couldn't identify. I'd better stay away from _those_. Who knows what manner of sickness those would give me.

I wasn't the only one who smelled the meat. Ialion's tail moved back and forth along my back eagerly until I lurched my back against him, sending him the signal to stop lest somebody notice that my pack conspicuously moved by itself.

"Greetings, I am Borstan. What would you like to buy? Or are you just browsing?" asked the orc in the middle. "If you have trouble finding anything, just let me know, I'll be more than happy to help out."

"Thank you," I replied. There was only one other person inside, a female troll with a blue dress on, looking about at the section of the store where steaks hung. She seemed overly formal in her attire. I myself walked over to the section of the store that held venison, the salted and preserved meats hanging either on hooks, speared through with a stick rotisserie-style, or on gleaming metal shelves. "I wonder how venison sounds," I whispered. Ialion got the message.

_Thump._

I selected two pieces of venison that seemed appealing, a large, raw slice that Ialion could eat easily for days, and a dried, preserved piece that he wouldn't find appealing, but which I would. Nodding to myself, I walked over to Borstan.

"I would like these two over here," I said, pointing to the ones I had chosen after I lead him over.

The orc nodded. "But of course. That'll be one gold." Without word, I fished my hand in my pocket and pulled out the coin and handed it to him. Borstan nodded, collected the meat, and handed it to me.

"Will there be anything else?"

_Thump. _I got the message. "Well, I'm thinking about buying some of that bacon over there." _THUMP! _I smiled. "Yeah, I'll have some of that bacon, too."

"Okay, that'll be another eight silver." I payed for it, and walked out of the store, placing the meat in my bag, carefully in a pouch separate from Ialion.

"Remember Ialion, no eating it."

_Thump Thump Thump,_ as he told me he couldn't respond with yes or no.

"Don't eat it, all right?"

_Thump_.

"Good. Let me just get some fruit and bread, and we can head back. We've got plenty of water and milk, anyhow."

The rest of the afternoon passed fairly quickly. I bought several assorted fruits, vegetables and bread for myself, seeing as how carnivorous little Ialion wouldn't eat those, and then headed back to the house, locking the door, taking off the pack and letting out Ialion.

He rotated his head around for a few moments, then flapped his wings experimentally. "Ow, ow. My wings are asleep. Ow." He flew over to his nest as I put away the food, casting a spell over the raw meat so that it wouldn't spoil.

"Just keep flapping them a little, it'll get better."

He grimaced. "I hope it does. Ow. So what's next?"

"Well, Saltio's done with her job, so I won't be able to tell Breorn about Nil Sag'ma without tipping _her_ off that I'm a spy. _Again._" I growled in exasperation. "I have to tell Breorn about Nil Sag'ma! And I can't go tell the guard directly_. _I tried yesterday, but Malg is so _scary_ that I can't get close to him, and because of _him_ I can't even get near the other guards_. _Those on patrol won't stop for idle chit-chat either, or so they think that's what I want. But at the same time I can't tell him with Saltio around, because then _she'll_ know, and then she'll be able to tell the rest of the cultists, and I'm not confident in our ability to stop her if she runs. Even _with_ my magic."

"Why don't you just stay up all night? You keep waking up late, so just don't sleep at all tonight," Ialion replied.

"I'm considering that. Damn it, should've bought some coffee. Think those stores will still be open?" I asked, opening the door open a crack to look outside as night approached rapidly. I closed the door again. "Well?"

_Thump_, came his reply.

"Well, may as well try. Remember, _don't_ get yourself caught."

"Yeah, yeah. Be back quick, please. It's boring here alone."

"Got it. Feel free to help yourself if you're hungry. Be back soon." I swept out of the house, closing the door softly behind me, and went out to get coffee for the long night ahead. The sunset nipped at my ankles as I walked, my shadow trailing further and further behind me as I searched for a store selling coffee. Without too much trouble I found one, bought a jar of the drink, and headed back to Ialion, my eyesight turning from colors to shades of gray as my eyesight adjusted to night.

"Alright, I'm back." I blinked my eyes as they adjusted to the candlelight, seeing Ialion digging his snout into a slab of raw venison he had pulled to his nest. "Did I miss anything?"

He looked up from his meal, licked scraps of meat of his snout, and shook his head. "Nope, nothing. So, what are we doing tonight?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. I'll find _some_ way to entertain myself. You're welcome to sleep, though."

The Twilight whelpling shook his head. "Nah. If you're not going to sleep, neither am I!"

I groaned. "Great. I'm having a sleepover party with a dragon."

"Hmm?"

"Nothing, nothing. Ialion, you should sleep. You're a kid, you need your sleep." He narrowed his eyes. "I'm not joking."

"Do I look like I'm joking to you?" he asked.

"Hard to tell, you're getting better at putting up a serious face."

He huffed. "Great. It's just like the stag who cried dragon. _Great._ I'm still not going to sleep, though. And you can't make me - hey, is that what coffee smells like?"

I shrugged off my bag and pulled out the container of black coffee, already made. "Yeah." I realized what he wanted. "No._ No._ Ialion, you are _not_ getting coffee. That's just a recipe for disaster."

He whined. "Awww. Come on, Amanthe! Can't I stay up? Please?"

"No."

"Please?" He put on the same sad-puppy-is-hungry face he had used to convince Selriona to let him come to Orgrimmar in the first place.

"No."

He whimpered, but I wasn't having any of it. I looked into his eyes, and he looked back into mine. However, I slowly felt my willpower crumbling. What if he was serious about being sad?

"Oh, all right, fine! But if you pass out of exhaustion tomorrow, it's not my fault."

"Yay! Thankyouthankyouthankyou!" He dove back into his venison.

I sighed, defeated, and began to eat my own dinner of an apple and bacon. I took out a glass and poured in some coffee in addition to milk and sugar, stirring it until it turned to a rich brown color. Ialion had stopped eating to come look at the concoction as I sipped it. I smiled. I'd had better coffee, but this would do. Besides, I hadn't had coffee in over a year, save for the bitter black coffee Saltio and Breorn had bought be my first day in Orgrimmar. I never knew how much I missed it until I tasted some again.

"Can I have some?" came the young dragon's voice from over my shoulder.

"No!" I told him, turning around to look the whelpling in the eye. "Ialion, Light forbid you _ever_ have caffeine. I don't want to think about what would happen."

He pouted, but said nothing as I finished the remaining drink.

The rest of the night was spent in utter boredom as I occasionally made myself coffee to keep myself up. Ialion and I talked about all sorts of things, ranging from the absurd, to family happenings, even to philosophy (Though most of _that_ went right over his head.). His speech slowed down as the night passed, and his eyes drooped with the effort he maintained to stay awake.

Everything went relatively well, up until the point I placed down an unfinished cup of coffee while I went to the restroom located at the back of the house, my tired brain forgetting the fact that Ialion wanted to taste it. When I returned, I found an empty cup of coffee, and a Twilight whelpling licking a brown fluid off of the scales around his mouth.

"It tastes sweet. I didn't know something made from _plants_ could taste sweet."

I gulped. Most of the night had already passed, luckily, so he'd have exhaustion balancing out the rush he'd soon be getting. But still...

"Oh, this is _not_ going to be pretty."

I was right. Within minutes, Ialion was practically bouncing off the walls, flying in circles, talking so fast I nearly couldn't understand him. "SoAmanthe, whatdoyouthink Breornwillsayto that NilSag'maguybeing corruptedbytheBurningLegion? Imean, that'sapretty - "

"Slow down. I can't understand a word you're saying," I said with a yawn. Despite the coffee's efforts, sleep deprivation crept up on me. I felt nauseous, unable to eat or drink anything without gagging.

Ialion sighed, and repeated what he said, but I could tell he struggled to slow down. He'd crash soon enough, though. Once he was done reiterating, I responded. "Yeah. I don't know how he's going to react to that. I mean, the Twilight's Hammer is one thing. But if the Legion is _using_ them, well, something's definitely up. But more importantly, what's the guard going to do? Maybe they'll go after them right away?"

Ialion flew at a wall, then latched onto it with his claws, running straight up the surface a little ways before flipping off of it into flight. If I hadn't been so tired, I would've been impressed. "Maybe. Don'tknowuntilyoutell himanyway, right? When'sthesuncomingup?"

I paused for a moment to decipher him. By the Light, he spoke as quickly as Selriona had in Stormwind when she was ground-sick. "Soon, don't worry. After that, you need to take a nap, or something. That coffee's going to wear off any second, and you're going to be tired after."

He nodded, landing on his nest and beginning to pace back and forth. "Okay, somaybeI'm goingtosleepafter. Yeah,sleepsoundsnice. Sleep..." With that, Ialion collapsed in his nest and began snoring, his wings tucking onto his back and nearly concealing the small shiver that rippled through his body.

I sighed. "There's the crash." I moved over to him and patted his scaly flank. "Sleep tight, Ialion. I'll be back soon." I crept outside, to where the sun slowly began its journey across the sky, but in spite of its warming rays, it was cool, the lingering traces of night being coupled with a breeze to chill the air. Saltio would be going to her job soon. I had a relatively small window in which to talk to Breorn about the whole Burning Legion issue. I walked over to their house and stopped outside when I heard shouting coming from within. It was too muffled for me to make out, but Saltio and Breorn had a heated debate about... something.

I'd noticed it in Saltio. She was corrupted mentally. Her temper shortened further and further as time passed, and no doubt her corruption continued to spread throughout her body like the disease that it was, at an ever-increasing pace despite my efforts to stop it. She'd picked arguments with me more and more often, but this was the first time I'd ever heard her argue with Breorn, four days after I'd noticed her corruption. I heard Saltio's voice raise, then be silenced as Breorn bellowed something out at her. She shrieked out something in response before dropping the pitch of her voice, and two shouting over each other. They both stopped for a while, and I heard Saltio harshly speaking to Breorn, albeit in a much quieter tone.

The door slammed open, and a tauren stormed out, her expression so intense as to give the illusion of steam curling off her fur.

"Hey Saltio," I told her, trying to be friendly.

"Not now!" she snapped at me, pushing past me like I wasn't even there.

I sighed, and knocked on the door, waiting patiently for Breorn to open it. After a few minutes he did, inviting me in without a word. The air inside their home felt tense, echoing the argument that had recently taken place.

"Hi, Amanthe. What're you doing here? Has something come up?" he asked solemnly.

I frowned, suppressing a yawn. "Yes. There's been a problem. Do you know who's leading the cult, the one planning the invasion?"

He thought for a moment, then nodded. "Yes, a warlock named 'Nil Sag'ma'. We don't know much about him, though, beyond the fact that he's leading them here."

"Well, I've done some snooping. Things are a little more complicated than we thought. Nil Sag'ma isn't serving the Old Gods. He's serving the Burning Legion." The yawn I tried to keep down came up, despite my attempts to stifle it. "The Legion is using the cult."

Breorn groaned, massaging his temples with his fingers. "Just what I needed to hear. Are you certain about this?"

I nodded. "A hundred percent. I stayed up all night so I'd be up in time to tell you."

"Alright. Alright, I'll go tell this to Malg as soon as possible. This'll make him decide to attack them, I'm sure of it. If I may ask, how did you come about this information?"

"I peeked into the tent he occupies. There are several pieces of Legion technology inside. The cult's not buddy-buddy with the Legion, and they don't exactly have the strength to _take_ any of their machines."

"Right. Thank you for telling me this information, Amanthe. I'll go relay it to Malg. Would you like to stay anonymous? Normally I wouldn't make you this offer, but..."

I nodded. "Yes, please. Malg is quite terrifying, I don't want him coming to me for more information."

He chuckled. "Indeed he is. See you around."

"Yeah, see you around." With that, I turned around and walked out of his house, leaving for my job at Liwatha's clinic, the tauren guard silently locking his door behind me. I hoped he'd be able to get the guard to get rid of the cultists right off. After all, if the Legion was using them on what was clearly a suicide attack, then they didn't have much else planned, did they? The invasion was a distraction. But for _what?_ What was in Orgrimmar that the Burning Legion wanted so badly? Or was it something they wanted to _do_ in Orgrimmar? Some important person to kill, like the Warchief perhaps?

I snorted as I walked. Yeah, just kill the Warchief. It was _so_ simple to do that, with his elite Kor'kron guard around him every hour of every day, not to mention Garrosh's own skill. The Legion wasn't stupid. So just what _did_ they want with Orgrimmar? I'd have to spy on Nil Sag'ma again, but even better would be to find out who the other spy was. The spy wouldn't be corrupt, not as much anyhow, since they'd resist the cult's influence. Saturday was another meeting of the cult; I could bring Ialion and see who was uncorrupt as they lined up to receive the speeches Nil Sag'ma spoke every Saturday, from what I'd been told. But that would be much easier said than done. He wasn't an idiot; he'd notice I wasn't there. But it was as good a plan as any to find the spy. It could have been _anybody__._

The day at the Seer's clinic passed without incident. A couple people were there, some of them I recognized as being in the cult, but luckily none of them seemed to recognize me. It was hard for me to heal them, knowing that they were, well, evil. However, one of them had bizarre injuries: he had little blood, but the few cuts and scrapes didn't add up to how much he had lost, and healing magic would have restored his blood levels as well.

A few hours passed with me fighting off sleep, the coffee's effects having long worn off, and I was released. I wasted no time in heading back to the house, eager to collapse on my bed and just _pass out._ The worst part of it all was the nausea, the sickening feeling in my throat which more than overshadowed the tiredness. After stumbling back in, I found my way to the bed, Ialion still sound asleep in his nest, collapsed in my bed, and was out like a light.

I groggily opened my eyes, tried to adjust them to the all-consuming darkness, failed, and closed them again. I groaned, and called up some twilight flame from my mana reserves to light my path. Slimy and cold flame around my hands, sharp in contrast to the warm, humid air around me, I found my way to a candle and lit it. For a moment the candle shone with blue light, but that quickly flickered into a normal flame. I put out my own blaze, and used that candle to light my way out into the main room. The dimmest of lights shone through the bottom of the door, signaling it was, indeed, night. I groaned, and was about to turn back to my bed when I heard the chattering of teeth.

I set the candle down on the table and walked towards the source of the noise. Sure enough, Ialion was curled up tight, wings hugging his body, shivering wildly.

"Hey, Ialion."

He opened an eye instantly, like he wasn't even asleep. "W-w-why is it s-s-so cold?"

"What are you talking about, Ialion? It's boiling in here. Maybe you're getting sick?"

"I h-h-hope not. That w-w-would not be f-f-fun." He let loose another line of shivering, trying to curl up on him even more. I reached out and patted his side gently, to which he reacted by latching onto my arm with his paws. "You're warm."

"Am I? Can you fly?"

Still shivering, he shook his head. "N-n-no. Too cold, t-t-too tired from t-t-the cold. Can y-y-you carry me?"

I frowned at that idea, feeling I should feel indignation for being carried on his behalf, but took his form in my hands and brought him back to my room, him shivering violently in my hands. What was wrong with him? I wasn't exactly an expert on dragon illnesses. I did know magic that could cure disease, but it was a powerful spell more suited to curing the _plague_. And it had been drilled deeply into my head during training not to use it on regular sicknesses, lest the body be unable to fend for itself. _'Hey, Selriona, I think Ialion might be sick.'_

_'What? Why? What's he like?'  
><em>

_'He's shivering constantl_y,' I told her as I sat down on my bed, darkness absolute, Ialion still shivering in my lap, but not as much as before. _'He might be sick, and I don't exactly know how to treat draconic diseases.'_

_'Shivering? Hmm, I think I know what that is. Ask him if he feels better when touching something warm.'  
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"Hey, Ialion. Your mom wants to know if you feel better when touching something warm."

He shifted himself, pressing his snout into my stomach, and gave out a mumbled, "Yeah, better. You're pretty warm, Amanthe. That f-f-feels nice. Really nice."

Sound guiding my actions, I brought a hand to gently pat his head. _'He says yes.'_

_'Oh, then he's not sick. He's just made the transition over to being cold-blooded. His siblings are going through the same thing right now. He'll feel cold at first, but he'll get used to it. Don't worry about him, he's perfectly fine. I remember when_ I _became cold-blooded. He'll be a bit... clingy, for a while. You mammals are pretty warm.'_

_'Okay, good. At least he's not sick. That wouldn't be good. Thanks for the help.'  
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_'Yeah. Maybe you could have him sunbathe. That always helped me when I was getting used to it. It still feels_ heavenly.'_  
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_'No, it's night. No sun to be had.' _I laid back in my bed, tucking Ialion under the covers with me to help keep his blood warmed, his scaled body still shivering so hard as to nearly be convulsing.

_'Oh, shame. Any news about the cult?'  
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_'Not much. I told Breorn about Nil Sag'ma, and he said he'll relay it to the rest of the guard. I've got an idea on how to find the spy, but it's not going to be easy. But it looks like things are set as they are. The guard knows about the cult, and is going to attack them before the invasion. Things are looking good.'  
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_'Yeah, when you put it that way, it looks like Orgrimmar's got itself handled. Well, I'm going to sleep. Bye.'  
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_'Same to you, Selriona. Same to you.'_ I stopped using the link, and stroked Ialion. "Well, I know why you're cold, Ialion."_  
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He sighed against me, clearly savoring the warmth my body gave off. "W-why?"

"You're cold-blooded now. So it's only normal that you'll be feeling so much colder."

"I'm c-cold blooded n-now? That's n-nice. About t-time."

I found it a little odd he was looking _forward_ to it, but I didn't question him. "Yeah, you are. It makes sense, when you think about it."

He cooed against me. "You're r-really warm. I-I think I'll s-sleep here."

"Ialion, that might not be the best idea. Yes, I know you're cold, but I might roll over onto - " I was interrupted by a light snore. I sighed. " - you." I rolled out of bed, gently grabbed the sleeping whelpling, and got out of bed, returning him to his nest. I felt a pang of guilt go through me as he shivered when I set him down, so I picked up the candle that I had left on the table and placed it next to him, close enough that it would warm him, but not so close that he might knock it over.

Rubbing my eyes, I returned to my bed, pulling the covers over my form and closing my eyes, more than ready to continue sleeping.

* * *

><p>I stood atop a chunk of violet stone, hovering atop a vast, star-filled void. There was no motion in any way; I could've been moving at the speed of a snail or at the speed of the Deeprun tram, and I wouldn't have known the difference. I crawled to the edge of the stone, making it tilt dangerously as my weight moved to one end. Looking down, I saw a faint red light far in the distance with a tiny black figure in its core. I narrowed my eyes, trying to make out what the figure was, to no avail. I resolved to get closer, and inched further off my rock.<p>

Within an instant, my equilibrium vanished. I fell off the rock with a scream, falling down into the glowing red light which grew larger and larger, brightening until it made the stars fade from my sight. Once I was in the core of the light, I saw that the black figure was gone. It made sense to me now; _I_ had been the black figure. My descent stopped, some unseen force holding me suspended.

I twisted around, the red light starting to heat up around me. All at once, the light vanished, and I felt something wrap around my hand. Looking up, I saw a red, fleshy tendril wrapping around my wrist at the same time I felt something similar latch onto each of my feet and my other hand. They grew taut, holding me suspended in empty space, the returning stars winking at me maliciously. Just as the tension on my body began to grow painful, the tendrils stopped tightening, hanging me so that my two feet and left arm made a line, and my other arm hung straight down, letting me look down that way. The stars vanished, leaving me in an empty black void for a few moments, my limbs aching where the tendrils pulled at them.

Light exploded around me, illuminating a cubical, gray room. The tendrils vanished, dropping me down into the center, where I got to my feet, stumbling a little. I walked around, placing my hands on the smooth, featureless gray walls, searching for a way out, a way that didn't present itself. A quiet flurry of whispers sounded, too muffled for me to make out, and the harder I focused on them, the harder it was to interpret them, so I couldn't ever understand what was being said. After navigating the room twice, a section of the room vanished, the whispers stopping to let someone walk in, before resuming.

The person looked vaguely human, but stood towering above me, almost as tall as a dragon. He had thick, sky blue hair, his beard being braided, the braids extending down to his waist. On either side of his black, star-sprinkled robes was strapped a shining, sparkling blue dagger. He grabbed hold of them both, pointing the weapons at me. A chill ran down my spine, and he ran at me, every speck of blue on him changing to a blood red as he raised a ruby dagger over me and brought it down -

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><p>I sat straight up in my bed, swearing. I brought my hand to my heart, feeling its thunderous beat. Growling, I got up out of my bed, walked to the front door and began weaving more wards against nightmares, since the previous ones had obviously faded. I wove the magical commands, calling upon the Light for the energies needed, being sure to make the wards a <em>lot<em> stronger than before. Hopefully they'd last longer.

I opened the door, hissing a bit as the blinding sun poured in unabated. I closed the door and returned to Ialion, the candle I had placed nearby to warm him long extinguished. He still shivered slightly, but nowhere near as much as before. I looked back outside. Judging from the position of the sun, I had a few hours until it was time to go to Seer Liwatha's clinic. I might be able to get Ialion some time to sunbathe. I got myself a small breakfast and scarfed it down in the light of the candles I had set up, illuminating the little home.

I dug my hand into my pocket as I chewed my bread and butter, taking out the Orb of Deception and staring at it contemplatively. Its violet color and golden inscriptions of griffins seemed to shimmer with the all-important magical energies it provided me, letting me live in Orgrimmar without any trouble. If I wanted to let Ialion sunbathe, I had two options. Either I could take him out of Orgrimmar and have him sunbathe there, or I could try to extend the Orb's magic onto him to hide the color of his scales, letting him sunbathe in the Horde's capital city without causing trouble. I extended my magic into the Orb, trying to figure out how I might go about doing so. It was a twisted labyrinth of magical commands, with several brighter strands that had to be Selriona's adjustments. I grasped at several of the commands, attaching others to them and twisting them about, trying to get the desired effect out of it.

After a few minutes of magical tweaking, I decided the result was sufficient. I brought it next to the still-sleeping Twilight whelpling, and fed even more magic into it. As I had predicted, the magic spilled over, covering Ialion like a blanket and turning him translucent, then transparent, before making him completely invisible. I moved the Orb into my other hand, placing additional distance between it and him, and Ialion reappeared, still sound asleep.

I smiled. "Perfect." I placed a hand on his flank, gently shaking him awake. "Hey, Ialion. Wake up."

Slowly, he opened his eyes."Hmm? Wha?" he said, sitting up.

"Ialion, we've got a little while before I have to go to my job, so what would you say to the idea of me taking you outside to sunbathe?"

Before I could blink, he was flying towards the door. "Let's go! Let's go! Brood-mother says that sunbathing is feels really good. I want to try it. Come on!" He lunged for the door's handle, but paused when it was in his mouth. He let go of it and looked back at me. "Wait. How are we going to do that without anyone, you know, noticing me?"

"I've modified the Orb of Illusion. Come a bit closer to me, you'll see." He gave me a sideways look and flew in my direction, then stopped when he began to fade away. "Come on. Stay close to me, and nobody will see you. But they can still hear you, so be _quiet!_ Let's get you someplace warm." I felt a pressure on my shoulder as Ialion perched there, lightly digging his claws into the skin. We went outside, where the early morning life of Orgrimmar was just getting started, a few civilians walking to and from their respective destinations. I looked at where Ialion was supposed to be, making sure he was still invisible, and hid the Orb in my pocket.

I jogged through the streets of the Valley of Wisdom, my feet bringing the two of us to the lake that dominated the area. I looked around the area, searching for a stone that Ialion might find appealing. At last I did, a small, red oval of stone inclined slightly towards the lake, the sun beating down on it so that it scorched my fingers just to touch it. Several small gems glinted on it in the sunlight as I knelt next to it. "Okay, what do you think of this one?"

I felt his weight leave my shoulder. A moment later, I heard a tiny purr from beside me. "Ooooh. That's _wonderful__._" I shifted around on my feet, going from a kneel to sitting down. I then lowered a hand to his position, felt around for his tail, and rested my hand on top of it to make sure he wouldn't move. "Can we stay here the rest of the day?"

"Sorry Ialion, no. Remember, I still have to go to the clinic, and then you'll have to go back to the house."

"Why can't I just come with you to the clinic invisible?"

I looked down at where I imagined his eyes were. "Ialion. _No._ I do not trust you around that many people, especially with dozens of glass containers on shelves."

I could envision him pouting at my denial. "Aww, come on. I'll be good, I promise."

"_No._" I said sternly.

"Hmmph." Then he settled back into purring in the warmth of the sun. I began to look around at the dozens of people milling about, quite a few of them fishing. Ialion was content to simply lay there, purring quietly as his blood warmed up. I spotted a goblin talking excitedly with a rather bored-looking blood elf, no doubt giving him a sales pitch. Turning my head the other way, I spotted a tauren taking a light jog through the area. He made a lap around the lake, then vanished around a bend, gone without a trace.

For a few minutes the two of us just sat there, near motionless, me looking at the lake and Ialion looking gods know where. However, I did notice something peculiar out of the corner of my eye. A blood elf woman walking around, carrying a two-handed sword as tall as her on the back of her golden armor, the blade glinting with gold and several runes that I couldn't make out from my distance. The sun glinted off of her paladin armor as she jogged, forcing me to shield my eyes from the glare Layalith's armor reflected at me.

"Layalith's a paladin? Hmm, that makes sense. She did wear that sort of armor in the Highlands. Wait a second. If she's a paladin, how is she in the cult? Paladins train to reject corrupt ideals. I know, I've seen their training." They rejected corrupt ideals... _most_ of the time, unlike a certain former prince.

"Hmm? That blood elf with the shiny armor?"

"Yeah, her. She's in the cult, in the high class with me."

"What does that have to do with anything? Mmmm..." I heard Ialion's claws scrape against the stone as he shuffled, his invisible tail moving under my hand. The words being spoken by members of the Horde around me suddenly lost their cohesion, the Orb's translator malfunctioning. A gleam of violet scales appeared under my hand.

"Shit!" I moved over and sat behind the whelpling, placing my legs around him in a 'bowl' and leaning over as if I was stretching, my hands reaching for my shoes in an attempt to conceal the now-visible dragon. A minute passed like that, and the Orb's magic strengthened again, Ialion vanishing from sight. I got up and moved to his side again.

"Amanthe, what was that about?"

"You were becoming visible. Never mind, what were you saying?"

"Me? Nothing. So, what if Layalith's a paladin?"

"Paladins generally do not join _doomsday cults._ Neither do priests, usually, unless they've already learned the shadow abilities that I know. That armor is paladin armor, I'd recognize it anywhere. Layalith's likely not going to be a cultist AND a paladin, so..." It was a risk, of course. I couldn't just walk up to her and ask, 'Hey, are you spying on the cult?'. That would be a disaster. I'd need to look into this further, be absolutely certain she wasn't with the Twilight's Hammer, before joining forces with the blood elf.

"Amanthe, are you thinking what I think you are?" I could picture him looking up at me.

I smiled. "I think we may have found our spy friend."

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><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<strong>


	8. Chapter 8:Sneaky Whelpling

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.  
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**Huge thanks to my beta, Dusty the Umbravita.  
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**Chapter published 5/3/12  
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><p><span>Amanthe<span>

Days passed.

I kept going out early in the mornings to look for Layalith; if I wanted to know for certain that she was the anonymous spy Breorn had told me of, then I needed to know if she was corrupted. I needed to see if she glowed within the twilight realm. The problem was this; if she DIDN'T have corruption, and I just entered the twilight realm right off, I wouldn't know where she was. The uncorrupted piece of air I see in the twilight realm might not be Layalith at all, but instead a random snake. By the same token, if she _was_ corrupt, I wouldn't be able to distinguish it from the other cultists.

I needed to have a specific time where I knew exactly where she was, so I would know for certain if it was _her_ corruption/lack of corruption I saw.

Which was easier said than done.

Layalith had a habit of training early in the mornings and late in the afternoons. Sure, it fit in well with my work schedule, so Liwatha wouldn't be suspicious, but she also went into Grommash Hold to train, and no way in the Twisting Nether I was going in _there._ So I had to resort to following her discreetly when she wasn't training, but at first she didn't seem to follow any pattern outside of Grommash Hold, which was _irritating_. One day she went to the lake in the Valley of Wisdom, another time she went browsing within the Drag, still another she wasted time in the auction house within the Valley of Strength.

And of course, on the weekends she went to the meetings with the wretched cult, as did I, where we learned that there would be a meeting every day for the Noblegarden celebration. Wonderful. Of course, I made sure to keep my distance from Nil Sag'ma.

However, as the Noblegarden invasion loomed closer and closer, I began to see a pattern emerge in Layalith's movements. She seemingly went off a two-week cycle, one that I could predict. Good. We had three days until the invasion. I'd started getting better at sabotaging the cult, doing more than hiding a few keys here and there, doing things like 'accidentally' messing up the binding magic on elemental containers, placing just a little too much power behind my spells in duels and perhaps seriously injuring someone, and the likes.

I wasn't doing much, though. The cult's plans carried forward without a hitch. No doubt the actual invasion would be a little weaker than if I hadn't interfered, but I'd seen how many elemental boxes Nil Sag'ma had stacked up in his tent. It was like taking buckets out of the ocean. The guard still did not attack the cultists, which made me wonder if perhaps there was Old God corruption within their own ranks. Sadly, when I went to go investigate with Ialion, nothing turned up within the Twilight realm.

But I knew where Layalith would be, and I was all but one hundred percent certain that she was, indeed, the spy. I'd seen how she behaved outside of the cult, not at all as snappy as she was inside the cult. The face she'd presented in the Twilight's Hammer had to be an act. Today, she'd be atop the Orgrimmar Skyway, gazing at the city below. It was perfect. However, that wouldn't be until the afternoon. At the moment, it was morning, and I had to prepare for the day at the priestess Liwatha's little clinic.

I was getting ready to head out when I heard the door open, slamming against the wall. With a startled screech, Ialion dove into my bed and hid under the covers. I walked out of my bedroom to see Saltio storm into my house. Her white horns seemed tarnished in their sheen, and her white and brown spotted fur was unkempt and soaked from the rain outside, the fibers of hair going in every direction. She wore the same light red and green clothing she had when I'd first met her, but it was spotted with mud and other such things. Her physical appearance perfectly reflected the corruption in her, the corruption I'd failed to stop.

"Amanthe, I need to talk with you," she barked out. She didn't wait for my response, and took a seat at my table.

I frowned and sat with her. Time to play the good friend, however much _that_ had helped. "What is it, Saltio?"

She propped her elbows on the table and rested her head in them. "I don't know. It's just, I've been feeling so different lately. And I'm worried, with the elemental invasion soon. What if things go wrong? What if we're discovered first? Ancestors, what will Breorn think if he discovers me?"

"Hold up. You said you've been feeling different."

She sighed, head still in her hands. "Yeah, yeah. I've just felt... I don't know. I guess sick is the best word for it. I don't know if you've noticed, but I haven't exactly been the nicest person lately." Was she noticing her own corruption? Better yet, was she fighting it _off? _"I've been snapping at you, at _Breorn_. He's my husband, damn it. I should love him, but... I just can't. I don't know when this started, but I can't feel happy for anyone, _with_ anyone. What's going on? I can't figure it out. Anytime I get close, I find myself angry at not having figured it out sooner, and I fall back to square fucking _one_!" She slammed her fist into the table with a suddenness that made me lurch.

She looked up at me. I noticed her eyes were bloodshot. "Amanthe, you're a priestess. I'd say you're my friend, but lets be honest. What kind of a friend have I been lately? What is _wrong _with me?"

I bit my lips. "Saltio, I don't know how to put it to you gently. This started when you joined the cult. Look, there's no easy way to tell you this. You're corrupted. Not physically, but mentally, you are."

She deflated, placing her head against the table, hands wrapped around the back of her neck. "Corrupted?" she asked, her voice muffled by the wooden table.

"Yeah," I said softly. "I noticed it a few weeks ago. I tried to stop it, but you've been getting worse and worse. I'm sorry."

Her head snapped up. "YOU KNEW? And you didn't TELL me?" she yelled? "WHY THE HELLS NOT? This isn't something you _keep_ from people, Amanthe! What else do you know about me that I don't?" She gripped the table with one shaking hand, the wood cracking as she used the muscles that had developed from her training.

"You're right, Saltio. I should've told you. But I kept telling myself I could get you out of the corruption. I was wrong, and now you're paying the price for it. I'm sorry. There's still hope, though. You can be uncorrupted."

"But do I want that?" she whispered. "This... feeling of sickness. It's comforting, in a way. Reminds me every second of every day that I'm still alive. I don't see things as clearly as before, but I don't _need_ to. It's all looking so simple to me now. Someone talks to you, snap at them. Someone differs in opinions? Yell at them. It's all so much simpler now. But... I can't help but feel it shouldn't be like that."

"Saltio, listen to me, very closely."

"DON'T TREAT ME LIKE AN IDIOT!" she shouted, standing up, making me jolt back. She shook her head and sat back down, her voice falling to a whisper. "That's exactly what I'm talking about."

"Saltio, just hear me out," I said. "The reason you feel it shouldn't be like this is because it _shouldn't. _I know how the cultist organization works. Ros'fon, the lower class, he indoctrinates you. Then the middle class, Glidia's class, corrupts you more effectively. Ros'fon is more about training. Glidia makes sure you don't leave their clutches."

"How come you aren't corrupt? You're in the highest class, _Nil Sag'ma's_ class. How come you haven't been corrupted?"

"Because I knew they were going to do that to me." Saltio twitched, but didn't do anything beside that. "I could fight it off, because I knew what they were going to do to my soul. Saltio, listen. Breorn and I, we can help you. I know you feel like you don't need to be uncorrupted, but that's _because _you're corrupted. Please, once you're better, you'll know what you sound like now."

Wrong thing to say. "And what do I sound like? I've known myself ALL MY LIFE! And you've known me, what? A little more than a month? No, not even that, because I hardly speak to you at all! You avoid me like the Scourge plague! Don't tell me I don't know what I sound like! _Nobody_ knows me better than I do!"

"This _isn't_ you!" I tried to keep my voice friendly, but my irritation began to show. "Saltio, don't you remember what you were like when I first came here? You were kind, you tolerated my rudeness even though you constantly _barged_ in without invitation. I made it no secret you annoyed me, but you still tried to be friendly to me. Now look. The tables are turned, aren't they? Do you honestly think it's a good thing to be corrupted? To be tainted by the Old Gods? _Tainted?_ Just its definition should tell you that it's bad, but you can't figure that out because of the grip on your mind! Let me help you. Just let me help."

She took a deep breath, glaring at me, but relented and relaxed her grip on the table, the wood cracking in relief. "Okay. How can you help me? What do I need to do?"

"If you want to be uncorrupted, you'll need to leave the Twilight's Hammer. They're the source of your corruption."

She stood up again, yelling. "NO! I won't do that! I won't! The people in the middle class, they're my family. They're my friends. They understand me better than anyone else, better than you, better than my parents did, better than Breorn! They know what I'm going through! I don't care what else I need to do, I won't betray my friends. I'll burn Orgrimmar to the ground with everyone in it before I do that!"

I was losing. I had one more chance. "With Breorn in it?"

She made a strangled sound. "E-eh. Y-n. Grah! You do what you want, Amanthe! I thought you could help me, that you could tell me what's wrong with me!" I started to open my mouth to tell her I _had_ told her what's wrong with her, but she didn't give me the chance. " But instead you tell me that I need to give up EVERYTHING I've worked so hard to get! To give up my family, to give up the only thing that makes me feel even a shadow of happiness anymore. For what? For some empty promise that I'll get better? No, no, a million times no! I'm going to the Drag. Don't try to help me again, or convince me this isn't what I want. May the Old Gods help you if you try."

Before I could retort, she ran out of my house, slamming the door behind her. The force from that caused the cupboards to open slightly and a jar full of milk to pitch over. I stuck out a hand and cast a levitate on it an instant before it had the chance to shatter.

I sighed and placed it back, closing the cupboard. "Ialion, you can come out now."

A flutter of wings heralded his arrival. "You can't help her, Amanthe. She's gone," he said from behind me.

I growled in frustration. "You're right, she's beyond help. I thought I could save her. I thought that being polite and friendly to her would've been enough, but it wasn't. She's beyond help."

"When corruption gets too bad, all we can do is burn it out, ya know."

"I won't kill her. There's one more way. If she won't leave the cult, then I'll _drag_ her out, kicking and screaming. And there's one surefire way for me to do that." I turned towards the door.

"What are you doing?"

"Breorn deserves to know. I should've told him sooner, but I didn't. Procrastination. Funny thing, it always feels so right when you're doing it, but when it comes back to bite you in the ass, it's so much worse. Well, I'm done putting it off. I'm going to go tell Breorn, then after I'm done with my job, I'm going to confront Layalith. I _know_ she's the spy. I don't need the twilight realm, I've just been kidding myself." I looked at the Twilight whelpling. "Stay safe, Ialion."

He gave off a slight shiver, then nodded. "I will."

I turned back around, and marched out the door. I wove a bubble of light around me, keeping me dry in spite of the rain pouring down the sides of the shield. I made my way towards Breorn's home, and knocked on the door. It opened, and Breorn's face was the same mask that it was whenever he'd had an argument with his wife. "May I come in?"

He nodded solemnly. "Please." He stepped aside to let me in, closing the door behind me as my magical barrier dissipated. "What do you need to talk to me about?"

"Breorn, I haven't been entirely honest with you, about the cult. There's something you need to know."

His eyes narrowed. "Why haven't you told me? If they are planning something we don't know about - "

"It's not something they're planning. It's something personal." I licked my lips. My tongue felt like ashes in my mouth, a lump the size of Ialion formed in my throat, and the dimly lit walls of the guard's home seemed to suffocate me. My heart beat so fast in my chest I feared it would break a rib, or maybe Breorn would after I delivered the news. "I shouldn't have kept this from you, but I thought I could stop it myself. I thought that I could pull her out of their clutches, but I was wrong. I was wrong, and now she's paying for my mistake. I'm just going to say this." But I found that I couldn't. I kept dancing around the issue. "Alright, you know what the Twilight's Hammer does to its members?"

"Um, works them until they're no further use and then kills them?"

"No, no. Well, yeah, but that's not what I meant. You know how they corrupt their members, right, so that they wouldn't want to leave, and be angry and irritable and place everything second to the cult, even those they love - "

"Amanthe," he said, his voice going hard. "Tell. Me. Now."

"Saltio's in the cult. She's corrupted by them, and I've been trying to save her, but I've failed. I didn't have the heart to tell you, and it's all my fault. The invasion's supposed to be in three days, the guard attacks in two days. I couldn't get her out."

Breorn stumbled, placed a hand against a wall, and began to slide down when he caught himself on his hooves. "Saltio..." he choked out. "That's why she's been... no. How could she? _How?_ I know her, she'd never do something like this!"

"She came to see me just a few minutes ago, asking me what was wrong with her. I told her, and she just sort of _accepted _that. She asked me how she could fix it, and I told her she had to leave the cult." I bit my lip. "She didn't take it well. She left. She's too far gone. She's not coming back out of the cult."

"Ancestors... I need to go."

"You're not angry at me?"

He shook his head. "No. I should be thanking you. So, thanks for telling me. Eventually. I have to go." He began to go for the door.

"Wait, where are you going?"

He turned back at me, his eyes reflecting just a _little_ more light from the few candles than before. "I am a guard of Orgrimmar first and foremost. Saltio is a Twilight's Hammer cultist. I'm going to get a warrant for arrest."

I swallowed the lump in my throat. "At least there she'll be uncorrupted, eventually."

"Yes. That's the idea. Ancestors, why did it have to come to this? Are there any other names?" I told him the names of the few other cultists I knew, save for Nil Sag'ma, who he already knew about, and Layalith, who I knew in the pit of my stomach was the spy. The guard didn't know, since she had been anonymous, but _I _knew. "Thank you, Amanthe." He then left his home, leaving me alone in it.

I sat down and beat my head against my fists. Damn it, damn it, damn it, I'd really messed up this time. I needed to get to Layalith, but she'd only be in the Skyway later. She was training at that moment, and in Grommash hold they'd find my Orb's magic signature in seconds. After all, they had to have _some_ magical wards in the Warchief's palace. I got up and wove another shield of light around me, left the tauren's home and locked the door behind me. Light, I couldn't imagine what went through his head. He had to _arrest his own wife.  
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_And it was all my fault.  
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I growled. I had places to go. A priestess to help out. I stormed my way over to her clinic, muttering curses at my situation, wondering why I hadn't acted sooner, why I _insisted_ on procrastinating, a flaw that had been mine as long as I could remember. It'd gotten me into no length of trouble in school, and now it was even worse. Saltio had fallen to the Old Gods' corruption. Breorn had to arrest his own wife, and I couldn't get the air inside my mouth to stop tasting like ashes._  
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I stormed into Liwatha's clinic, late, the curtains doing little to prevent the rain outside from seeping in and making the floor wet, puddles dotting the ground and reflecting light from the ceiling. "Amanthe, you're late."

"Sorry, I got held up. One of my neighbors came to ask me for help with their personal lives." Even after all this, you're still not telling her, I scolded myself. "It didn't go well."

"Well, there's nobody in now. Do you want to talk to me about it? Even we of An'she's light need consolation sometimes. I am a priest, you can tell me."

I growled, and started to form the word for 'no' in my mouth, but forced myself to say, "Yeah. It's my neighbor, Saltio. I need to start at the beginning. Doesn't matter much now, with it so close. Can I trust you not to tell anyone? I don't want to be discovered and outed."

She nodded. "Of course. What you say will stay between the two of us."

"I've been spying on the Twilight's Hammer cult. I've gotten myself into their highest class, so I know a lot about what they're planning. I've told the guard, and I found there's another person spying on them, but that's not important. My neighbor also joined the cult, the same day I started to spy on them. She..." I swallowed, moistening my throat. "She wasn't spying on them. I couldn't tell her husband, Breorn, a guard, about her. I figured, that if I was friendly to her, that if I pretended she was my friend and didn't annoy me, that I could stop her from getting corrupted."

"Oh, no..." said Liwatha, seeing where I was going.

"I failed. I told Breorn about the invasion the cult's planning, even though the other, anonymous spy had already told them, but I couldn't tell him about Saltio. I kept telling myself I could save her, that I could pull her out of the cult. I couldn't. She's too far gone, and I just told Breorn about her. He went to get an arrest warrant for his own _wife_, Light damn it, and it's all my fault."

"When _is_ this invasion?"

"The third day of the Noblegarden celebration, three days from now. The guard's planning to attack the cult the day before. There's going to be another meeting the day before _that_, and I plan to go to it, see if they have any last-minute plans."

"Amanthe, about Saltio. How far gone is she?"

"Completely gone. I openly told her she was corrupted, and she accepted it. Welcomed it. She's _gone._"

"Amanthe..." The tauren pursed her lips, as if looking for the right thing to say. "You meant well, but..."

"I know, I know! I meant well, but I messed it up. What was I thinking? That I could fight against the corruption of the _Old Gods_ with just nice words and invitations? Gods, what possessed me to think of that?" I chuckled. "You know, it's kinda funny how I even found out the cult was still here. You know the troll from about a month back, who was catatonic?"

She nodded. "Of course, I remember him well. You soothed his mind and set him right."

"His name was Ros'fon. Heh, he showed up at my house and practically recruited me into the cult. Turns out he's the head of their lowest class. Go figure he'd end up at your clinic."

"Oh, no."

"Yeah. What can I do about Saltio and Breorn? They're my neighbors, and I let them down."

"There's nothing you can do now, Amanthe. If what you have said is true, Saltio can not be simply brought back to us. She must be kept away from the rest of the cultists, if you want her... condition... to be reversed. What about the cult?"

I shrugged. "Nothing much about them. The guard looks like they've got it handled, but..." I bit my lips, wringing my hands as I began pacing. "Their leader, the cult's leader I mean, is corrupted by the Burning Legion. The guard knows this, I've told Breorn, but that means something bad. There's something more to this that we don't know about. This isn't just the Twilight's Hammer wanting to spread havoc. It's the Burning Legion _wanting_ something from Orgrimmar, something they couldn't get just by simply invading themselves."

The elder priestess wrung her hands. "Oh, this is unsettling. The Burning Legion. What does the guard plan to do about it?"

"As far as I've seen? Nothing. But I'm not done yet. I think I know who the anonymous spy is, a paladin named Layalith. Heck, I've known it for a while, but I kept putting it off. Once I'm done here, I'm going to go confront her. We can team up, and do something bigger than usual at tomorrows meeting, sabotage them more than just hiding a few keys. It'll be our last chance to do anything."

"This Layalith, you are certain she's the spy you are searching for?"

"Not entirely, but there's no more time to dally around. I've procrastinated enough as it is. I've been following her movements, and I've worked up a pattern for her. She's going to be up at the Skyway today, overlooking Grommash hold. I'm going to go talk to her."

Seer Liwatha nodded. "Good luck to you. Amanthe, you have been of great help to me these past weeks. I trust you, and if you need help, I am always available." She walked over and grasped my hand with both her own. "Listen, I will let you out early today. Go find Layalith."

I shook my head. "No, no. I don't know where she is before the afternoon."

"Then look."

I sighed. "Okay. Thank you, Seer Liwatha. You sure you can hold the clinic today?"

She chortled. "I'm not as old as you think I am. And besides, you said the leader of the cultist camp is a pawn of the infernal Sargeras. A paladin's help will be invaluable against their machinations, and certainly more important than this little place. Go."

I nodded, slipping my hand out of hers. "Thank you." I stepped closer to the downpour outside. "I have a paladin to find." I stepped outside into the rain, which already began to die.

* * *

><p><span>Ialion<span>

"I am so _bored_!" I shouted to the empty room. "Bored, bored, bored, bored!" I whacked my tail against my nest, looking down at the table. One of the candles flickered, so I brought flames into my crop and spat a mighty blast of twilight flame at it, the fireball vaporizing the pool of wax the wick threatened to drown in, steadying the light. I laid down, moaning in boredom and exhaustion, the cold of the rainy weather outside making its way into my blood in spite of the candle I'd flown up with me. I tried to sleep away the time, but to no avail.

It was so _boring_ without Amanthe here! Her nice scent still clung to the room, but even that faded when confronted with the smell of rain seeping in from outside. I had nothing to do in this stuffy house, but I knew I couldn't leave. Amanthe would tell Broodmother, and...

I shuddered at the thought of my mother scolding me. I couldn't take the risk of leaving, but it was just so boring. There was nothing to do to satiate myself! _Nothing!_

I whined, even though there was nobody around to hear. This little mission in Orgrimmar wasn't nearly as fun as I'd thought it would be. I'd pictured Amanthe and I stalking around, purging the taint of the Old Gods from every corner. Instead, I got to hide here in the house all day. Sure, I'd spent most of my life in the same chamber with my siblings and Broodmother, but this was different! Amanthe got to have all the fun, and I had to stay here or risk being caught. It wasn't fair! I could take care of myself! I was old enough! But instead I had to wait here, hours, for Amanthe to retur -

I blinked, raising my head. Why... _did_ I have the wait for her to come back? I could sneak out, then sneak back in before she was back, and she'd never know the difference! My internal clock told me she wasn't due back for a few hours yet, so why couldn't I just sneak out of the house, go outside Orgrimmar to have some fun, and come back before she did?

I sat up, andgrinned. That was a brilliant plan! Why hadn't I thought of it sooner? I'm so clever. I surprise myself. Flying off my little nest, and putting out the candles so they wouldn't accidentally burn the house down, I flew over to the door and pried it open with the handle in my jaws and flew out, pushing it shut behind me.

The rain bore down on me heavily, but it simply flowed off my scales. Too bad it was cold. It would've been quite lovely if it were warm. It also had the added benefit of scaring the other mortals indoors, so there wasn't a soul around to see me. I grinned. _This was too easy!  
><em>

I began flying higher, heading for the open sky, wary of any mortals looking for me. I snickered as I passed out of Orgrimmar. Amanthe would never know a thing!

Within minutes, straining my wings against the air, I'd passed roughly a half kilometer away from Orgrimmar. Then I let myself descend, wings snapping to their full length to glide. I looked back at the capital city of the Horde and laughed. Oh, this was too easy! And the rain had stopped too, so I'd be able to sun myself! Oh, it'd been so long since I had last sunned myself. I couldn't wait.

I fluttered out a little further, close to the ground, looking around at the few members of wildlife that passed. I'd never hunted before, but how hard could it be? Broodmother had taught me how. Surely it wasn't difficult.

I was right. Within minutes I'd had a feast on a few desert lizard eggs and a snake. I licked my snout clean of the snake's blood, and looked around for a place to sun myself. I still had hours until Amanthe returned, and the sky had begun to clear up, the flash showers retreating to the west, letting the warm desert sun shine down. Before too long, I found a place to sun, a little outcropping of red stone as tall as Broodmother, like a lobster's pincer sticking out of the earth, the crack barely large enough to let a fly through. I leaned against it, letting the sun come down and bake me, and I settled to close my eyes and purr as my blood warmed, energy and comfort radiating through my being. I hadn't been able to sunbathe before, while warm-blooded. This was _heavenly_. How had I survived without this?

For what seemed like hours, but could've just as easily been minutes, I laid, there, forcing myself to stay awake so I wouldn't miss the time to return, when I heard a noise. It sounded like the shuffling footsteps of a mortal, and the sound sent fear through me. What if it was Amanthe? I'd be in _so_ much trouble, not even the Pantheon would be able to save my hide. War waged within my mind. The parts of me that wanted to stay here and sunbathe invaded the territory of the ones that wanted to get up and see who the mortal was. The invaded part of me repelled the invasion, crushed the army of the sunbath-supporters, and conquered my mind after a bitter struggle.

Groaning softly, I began to crawl up the pincer of stone, using tiny clawholds as I bravely climbed up and peered through the littlest of cracks in the stone, to see who had led to the untimely defeat of the sunbathe supporters.

It was a bald orc male with bright green skin and eyes, purple cultist robes on him with a headpiece spitting flame. His presence made fear rise in me, but I wanted to see this. He stopped a few meters from my stone, just inside the shadow, and looked around.

Satisfied, he took a blood red crystal out from inside his robes, then another, one in each hand, and placed them on the ground, a meter apart from each other. He turned towards them, side to me, and closed his eyes, raised a hand, and began chanting in a rasping, guttural language. Shadowy runes appeared on the ground around his feet, making me fall down in surprise. Luckily, I caught myself with my wings before I could hit the ground and make noise. I climbed my way back up, any sound I made drowned out by the rumbling of his spell, my scent masked by the acrid stench of smoke. I peered back through the crack to see what the commotion was, Orgrimmar on the horizon.

The mortal had completed his spell, and now the two blood red crystals had a black smokescreen rising up from in between them, creating the image of... someone.

It was the top of a mortal, shoulders and head, looking a little bit like the draenei Broodmother had once described to us, and once taken the form of. This draenei was male, but instead of blue skin, had red skin. Odd. The draenei opened his mouth to speak, and his voice instantly made my body freeze, my muscles locking up and my bones turning to stone, the deep rumbling voice of evil cutting through me. "You have contacted me. First time in months, I have been thinking you failed, _again_. Speak, then. How go the plans to steal the device from the Liberality Confederacy?"

The orc spoke, his deep, rumbling voice cutting into me like a knife, the sound like that of a landslide. Luckily my claws were latched into the stone, otherwise I would've fallen. "It goes well, Kil'jaeden. It is no secret on the streets of Orgrimmar that the Kingslayers themselves plan to go to Thunderbluff for the Noblegarden celebration, and I would not be surprised if they were already there, preparing. We will not have to worry about their interference."

"And what of the Orgrimmar guard? And the Twilight's Hammer? You do still have control over both situations, yes? It would be a _shame_ if you didn't."

"But of course, Lord. These mortals are pathetically simple to trick. I am the leader of both the standard guard and the Twilight's Hammer in this region. I have recently received an arrest warrant for several of the cultists, which I had to sign in order to maintain my cover." The draenei's eyebrows shot up. "However, it is nothing substantial. The invasion will still be carried through." His voice began getting to me, fear shooting through my veins. The orc sneered. "This body is wretched. It is not often I get to unleash myself. If I may?"

"You may. I trust you were not so foolish as to create this transporter in the middle of Orgrimmar?"

"Of course not. We are alone, Kil'jaeden." Kil'jaeden, Kil'jaeden. That name niggled at me, like Broodmother had mentioned it once in passing, but I couldn't quite place what significance it held. I returned my attention to the crack, and nearly shrieked in surprise.

The orc had begun to transform. Two pairs of enormous, bat-like wings with sickly green membranes, sprouted from his back. He began to grow, his cultist robes shifting and turning into green and black plate armor over his arms, legs, and chest. His skin morphed, the bright green turning into a sickly white, and two massive horns sprouted from his forehead, curling up and back as he continued to grow... and grow. His fingernails turned into lengthy black talons, and his green eyes began to glow the same color as his wings. A fresh wave of fear rolled through me once he finished the transformation, nearly bringing a whimper out of me, turning me into a statue of a Twilight whelpling.

That wasn't a mortal.

Even I knew what this was. Broodmother had described them when some of my siblings got into an argument about which were worse: Demons or Old Gods. She'd read about them in her time in the Alliance capital city, and described this very thing before me. A Dreadlord. And that meant that draenei... wasn't a draenei. An Eredar.

"As I was saying, my Lord, the situation is under complete and utter control. The Twilight's Hammer has two spies in it, a blood elf paladin and a human priestess under the guise of an elf. The elf has reported the invasion plans to the guard, of course, but that is why I control them. The guard is convinced I will have them attack the cultists the day before the elemental invasion. The human is an... interesting case, though. She wields twilight flame."

Kil'jaeden's eyebrows shot up again. "Oh? Most curious. Are you certain she is not dragonkin?"

"I am certain, Lord. I tested her strength, and she is far too weak to be even dragonspawn. She is mortal, and claims the flame is a natural ability. Absurd, of course. It would appear that the Twilight dragons have been taking Dragonsworn."

"Is this of any concern to us?"

The dreadlord waved his hand, making me cringe. "Of course not. The Twilight Dragonflight's wherabouts and motives are unknown, however they do appear to be interested in the cult. There is a chance the human's patron may show up, but no mere dragon will defeat me."

The eredar Kil'jaeden nodded. "Good, good. What about the blood elf?"

The dreadlord shrugged. "What is there to say about her? She spies on the cult, but none of them suspect me. Although I have had to make several adjustments to the plan due to her alerting the guard; the invasion will be carried out on the morrow instead of three days hence, and while the mortals are distracted fighting cultists and elementals, I shall go and steal the," here the dreadlord sneered, as if what he was about to say tasted bad in his mouth. "_relic _from the Kingslayers, as planned. Once that is done, I will bring the relic directly to you." The demon's words weren't making sense to me, weren't being picked up and remembered by my mind. All I could do was tremble silently, thinking _DREADLORD, DREADLORD, THE LEADER OF THE CULTISTS IS A DR__EADLORD!_ I was unable to move from the fear and dread radiated by the two demons.

The red-skinned demon nodded. "Excellent, excellent. It appears all is going as planned, save for the time it is carried out. But be warned. I have not forgotten your most recent failure. You were excused last time for your standing and otherwise unmarred record, but do NOT think another failure will be tolerated. I will be waiting." Kil'jaeden's visage vanished, the smoke receding into the two red gems, which the dreadlord, already shifting back to his guise of a mortal orc, bent over to pick up. He placed the gems back into his robe, and vanished in a woof of black smoke.

The aura of fear released its paralyzing grip on me, and I did the only thing I could do.

I screeched in terror, and flew full-speed back to Amanthe's house.

* * *

><p><span>Amanthe<span>

Luckily, the rain didn't last much longer, the heavy, black clouds overhead being swiftly blown away by the wind. It wasn't too surprising there was such rain in a desert, what with Orgrimmar's location next to the ocean, but all the same Durotar was a _desert_, so the rainclouds quickly shriveled up. I walked along the Skyway, the rain drying up, searching for Layalith. I'd never gotten to see where she went during the day, being at my job with Liwatha's clinic, but I had to try. The sooner she knew, the better. We were _out_ of time. If we were going to do anything more, it would have to be now. I'd already blown it with Saltio and Breorn. I wasn't going to ruin this.

Finding Layalith wasn't too hard. Most people were in their respective work-places, so the streets were all but desolate. Soon, I came across a familiar blood elf in the Skyway. Lucky me, it appeared she spent most of the day up here. She stood near the western part of Orgrimmar, looking down at the Grommash Hold, where she went to train. Her red hair blended in with the rest of Orgrimmar, providing the illusion that she had a bald, misshapen head. She still had her golden armor on her, but not her sword.

"Hey, Layalith?"

She wheeled around, looking at me with narrowed, icy blue eyes. "What do you _want,_ Amanthe?"

"Can I talk to you about something? It's kind of important. Regarding the you-know-what coming up on the third day of Noblegarden?"

Layalith's sneer quickly evolved into a growl, but then it stopped. She smiled at me, too sweetly for it to be genuine, _es__pecially _for her. "Of course. But not out here, right? Do you have a place in mind? How about your place?"

"Could we not?" I don't want you attacking Ialion. "How about somewhere else?"

Layalith glared at me. "No, I _insist_ we go to your place. After all, we don't want somebody eavesdropping."

"Why can't we go to your home?"

"Well, we wouldn't be alone to talk about the _thing._ Either we talk about it at your house, or not at all."

I growled, throwing up my arms in exasperation. "Fine, fine. Follow me." I turned around and started to lead Layalith back to my house, occasionally looking behind me to make sure she still followed me. Meanwhile, I began to come up with a way to keep her from finding out about Ialion, or if she did, to keep her from doing anything rash. Maybe if I signaled Ialion before going back, he'd have the time to hide? That might work, but what signal? We'd never come up with one, and he wouldn't be expecting me to be back in the house that early. If I knocked on the door first and said loudly that we were there, loud enough for Ialion to hear... that might work. Within a few minutes, we arrived at the front of my house.

"Okay, we're here. Let's go in," I said loudly, making sure Ialion would hear me. I opened the door and stepped in, looking about. No flutter of wings. No flash of purple scales or green eyes with slit pupils. No candles lit either. I resolved that particular situation quickly, Layalith stepping in besides me and closing the door, not bothering to lock it.

"Okay, Layalith - " I turned around to see her plated fist rocketing towards me. I jerked my head sideways, weaving a shell of light around me.

She sneered. "Cultist scum! You don't deserve the wield the Light." Oh. So that's why she just did that. Well, now I knew she was _definitely_ the spy. She placed her hands together, light illuminating them, before she relaxed. A faint glow surrounded her, and then she snarled, placing her fists to the side. Light struck down at my barrier, making it quiver. Of course. A quiet, isolated spot. And cultists had a high mortality rate.

"Layalith, hold on! That's what I want to talk to you about!" She jumped at me, grabbing the barrier in her hands, and throwing me to the side. I didn't even know that was _possible_, to grab the shield itself. Unless the Holy Light she had about her let her. "I'm a spy too!" She kicked at me. My shield absorbed the shock, but with Light empowering her body, the magical bubble sailed backwards, with me in it, onto the table, cracking it down the middle. I growled. "Fine!"

I thrust out a hand, a blue and black beam connecting with her head. She growled, clawed at her head for a moment, before her glow pulsed. I could feel my magic slipping around her as she grew resistant to shadow magic, but continued the onslaught anyway. She fought through the magics flaying at her mind to approach me, but I was too far by then. Shadow energy wouldn't be effective on her now, and using the Light for offense wasn't my specialty. So that left me with one option. But first, I needed to get some distance. I threw my head back as Layalith closed in, letting shadows curl about in my throat and escape in a scream, shattering several of the glasses in the cupboards. Layalith stopped all at once and began scrambling back, running for the door, but once there, she came to her senses.

Before I could begin casting my next spell, a magical force like an anvil forced me to kneel, visions flashing before my eyes. I saw the various wrongs I had done throughout my life, from the teasing of my brother, to the rare bout of mischief I'd gotten into at school. The various flaws in my character flashed before my eyes, regret and guilt weighing me down like a ton of bricks. I was frozen by my repentance, unaware of the rest of the world, at least until a plated fist crashed into my stomach, sending me back, the wind forced out of me.

I was up in an instant, coughing as I tried to get my breath back, but Layalith was faster. I ducked below her kick, and quickly cast another shield over me. I let myself be covered by darkness, turning into the very embodiment of shadows. I uttered a word of darkness, and couldn't help but watch with wicked satisfaction as she was brought to her knees, the aura of spell resistance about her keeping the shadow word from harming her, but not sparing her the agony of the spell itself. I wasted no time; as a paladin, she'd rise over the effect shortly, so I had little time to cast the spell that would make her lose confidence. Good thing Ialion still hid.

By the time a flash of light surrounded Layalith and she stood up from my spell, I was already done. Thick coils of slimy twilight flame raced around my outstretched arm, a tiny meteor of the stuff in the palm of my hand. The blood elf growled. "So, you've resorted to that."

"Twilight flame's nasty stuff, Layalith, you know that. And I've got good aim with this. Would you just hear me out?"

"I don't think so, _cultist!_" She made to move at me, but I let the twilight fireball flare, and that made her retreat a ways. "What do you want, Amanthe?"

"I told you, I'm a spy in the cult too. And I know you are, too."

"How did you find out about that?" She tried to lunge at me again, but like before, a flare of the fireball's light reminded her of just how powerful the stuff was. "What gave me away?"

"You're a paladin. Paladins aren't usually people who wind up joining the Twilight's Hammer. And another thing. I told a guard about the cult's plan for an elemental invasion, and he said that an anonymous spy had already told them. So, I've been looking for who it is." I eyed her carefully. "Layalith, I'm going to put out the fireball, alright? Don't attack me, because I can always just make another one." In my mind, I chuckled. _Damn,_ twilight fire was useful.

"_Fine._" I nodded, and let the magic dissipate, slipping out of shadowform, but kept my barrier active. " So, you're a spy in the Twilight's Hammer. Alright. Assuming I do believe you, what then?"

"Do you even know what the guard plans to do about the invasion?"

She snorted, crossing her arms. "Not for the life of me, no. I tried to meditate to find it out, but nothing. I'm guessing _you_ know?"

"Well, my neighbor's a guard, so yeah. On the second day of the Noblegarden invasion, they're going to attack the cultists. I was thinking, that since tomorrow is the last day we can do anything to them, just in case they have another card to play, we should join up and mess stuff up from within."

She chuckled, a grating noise. "Okay, now explain to me why I should believe you."

I groaned. "What would it take for you to trust me?"

"Trust you? Save me from a Dreadlord. Believe you? Show me proof about you spying."

"Okay. You must've noticed several of the elemental boxes vanishing, or being broken?"

"Yeah, I've done that a few times, but not enough to - " She blinked. "Oh. Oh, you. But then, it could also be someone else."

I groaned, and beat my head against my fists. "Nil Sag'ma is corrupted by the Burning Legion."

"What? What's that got to do with - "

"Nil Sag'ma is corrupted by the Burning Legion. If you don't believe me - well. Paladins are trained to be able to sense demonic things, right?"

"No, we're trained to sense _evil._ Wait a moment, I could do that." She closed her eyes, and I felt a dull _thrum_ pass through my body, gone before I could do anything about it. Layalith seemed to relax, no longer as wary. "Huh. You're not evil. That's proof enough for me."

I sighed. "Finally! So, care to give me your story?"

"I came to Orgrimmar from Silvermoon, under suspicion from my superiors that there was Twilight's Hammer activity. They referred me to another paladin in Grommash hold so I could continue my training, but had me stay anonymous. I've been here eight months, now. I've known about the elemental invasion for the past five months, and so has the guard. Nil Sag'ma has been here for seven months. I have sabotaged a lot of the cult's plans, but I couldn't mess up everything, understandably. And sometimes I was forced to help them."

"Like when you went to get air elementals from the Twilight Highlands."

She nodded. "Indeed. I see you've heard about that. Anyhow, that's it. I've been wondering why the guard does not move against them. So, you say they'll attack the day before the invasion?"

"They will. They're planning to attack while they're busy doing last-minute things for the invasion. So, what do you say? Tomorrow, we start messing things up for them?"

A smirk played along Layalith's face. "Indeed."

"Hey, another thing. Why were you so, well, _annoying_ when you thought I was a cultist, but now you're not?"

She shrugged. "Two things. One, I had to act corrupt. And two, well, I don't like cultists."

"Hmm, fair enough. So - " Something thwacked against the door, interrupting me. I then heard scratches from it, and then the door opened, a purple, shrieking blur crashing into me.

"AMANTHEAMANTHEAMANTHE! Big bad, wings, scary, red skin, Legion!" yelled Ialion in Draconic, clutching my neck with his paws, his snout a hair from my face.

"Amanthe, watch out!" Realizing what was coming, I stepped back, letting Layalith's punch miss Ialion. I grabbed the whelpling with both my hands and tore him off.

"IALION! What were you think...ing?" I asked, looking back at Layalith, who stared at me open-mouthed. "Um, I _can_ explain this, just give me the chance to."

"Okay. I'll wait." Layalith moved to the door, and locked it. "I can be patient."

Meanwhile, Ialion kept struggling in my grip, spitting out a string of 'wings-demon-bad-Nil Sag'ma-red-not good'.

Finally, I yelled at him. "Ialion! Calm down! Whatever it is, it can wait!" He did, and I released him. He flew to the table, a single giant crack running through it from when Layalith had kicked me onto it, shielding magic and all. He collapsed, and began panting in exhaustion. "First off, WHAT WERE YOU THINKING? You, you, you _snuck out?_" I stammered. "Oh ho, just wait until I tell Selriona _this_!"

"No! No, please don't! It's important, I promise!"

I sighed. "Well, I need to ask her something anyhow."

_'Selriona?'_

_'Hmm? Yeah?'  
><em>

_'Well, we've got a little bit of a situation. You know Layalith, the one I suspected of being the spy? We're in my house, and I was right. She's the spy.'  
><em>

_'That's great news!'  
><em>

_'Yeah, except your bonehead of a son decided to sneak out while I was getting her to come here - '_

_'HE DID WHAT?' _The inside of my head rattled with her scream, prompting me to groan and hold my head with both hands.

_'It gets worse. He not only snuck out, he came back in while I was talking with Layalith, so now she knows about _him, _too, and is waiting for an explanation.' _I looked at Layalith, who remained tapping her foot, displeasure evident on her face, glaring at Ialion, who kept panting. Eventually, I got a response.

_'Can you trust her to keep a secret?'_

"Can I trust you to keep a secret, Layalith? If I'm right, it's going to be an important one."

She narrowed her eyes. "I can keep a secret, but would I _want_ to keep this secret?"

"It's extremely important you do."

"Let me guess, that dragon's got something to do with why you have twilight flame?"

_'Well? Can you trust her?'_

_'I'm working on it.' _"Well, yeah, it does." Layalith's face broke into an expression of horror at that. Meanwhile, Ialion had gotten some water and was busy lapping it up like there was no tomorrow. "I'm not a dragon, if that's what you're thinking! Look, just don't tell anyone, alright? It's not something you need to tell anyone else."

Layalith calmed down, looked to Ialion, who was busy inhaling water, and at me. "I swear on the name of the Light I'll keep whatever you're about to tell me a secret."

I blinked at how serious an oath she'd said. _'Okay, we can trust her. She won't tell anyone.'_

_'Okay, good. She's seen Ialion, and knows about your twilight flame. She's probably placed several things together already; she'll only believe the truth. Tell her about us.'  
><em>

_'What? Are you sure about that?'  
><em>

_'Yeah. As long as she doesn't tell anyone, it's just one person.'  
><em>

_'Isn't that how it always starts?'_

_'This isn't a fantasy novel.'_

_'Okay, if you're sure...'_

_'And tell Ialion that when he comes back, he is in _deep _trouble.'_

I smiled. _'Got it.' _I looked at Layalith, who was visibly getting impatient. "Okay, here it is. It all started a couple years ago, during the whole Deathwing fiasco..."

* * *

><p>Layalith sighed as I finished my story. "... and then I found you at the Skyway. You know what happened after that."<p>

She nodded. "That's quite a tale. I don't know what to make of it." She got up from her seat and began to pace around me where I sat, like a cat around a mouse. "A Twilight Dragonsworn. Twilight dragons defending Azeroth instead of trying to destroy it. You, a _human,_ of all the races." She nodded. "Okay then. I'll need a few days to think this over. In the meantime." She pointed up at the nest towards the dozing Ialion, who'd finished drinking when he began to gag, fighting down the vomit reflex. "Whelpling. What were you talking about?"

Ialion growled. "It's _Ialion _to you." He sat up and tried to puff out his chest, but failed, still woozy from drinking so much water. "Okay, Amanthe, you know how I, hehe, snuck out?"

I frowned at him. "Oh, I do. What were you _thinking_?"

"Well, I was so _bored_ here, and I wanted to sun myself!"

"What is it, he, I'm sorry, saying?" Only with Layalith's comment did I realize Ialion had been talking to me in Draconic, the Orb of Deception letting me understand him.

"Ialion, better speak in Orcish. You do know that, right?"

He shrugged. "Common, Orcish, and Draconic." He repeated what he said to Layalith, then continued. "So, I figured, hey, Amanthe's not coming back for a few hours, why can't I sneak out of Orgrimmar, sunbathe, then come back before she does?"

I smirked. "That would've worked, except Seer Liwatha let me out early to look for Layalith."

Ialion chuffed, looking down and spitting a pebble of twilight flame at his nest, which he laid his head on, quickly extinguishing the tiny blaze. "Anyway, I was sunbathing next to a little rock outcropping, when I heard a mortal coming my way. So I got up, and saw that orc that you described leading the cult, Amanthe."

"Nil Sag'ma," Layalith breathed.

"Yeah, that's the guy. Well, he took out these two crystals, and made an - I don't know. Some kind of communicator. There was an eredar on the other side. Red skin, called himself something like Kal'jooden."

"Kil'jaeden?" I asked, perking up, worry evident in my voice.

"Yeah, that's him. Why?"

"Ialion, Kil'jaeden is the _leader_ of the eredar! If Nil Sag'ma was talking to him, he's important."

He snorted. "Don't I know it. They started talking about a bunch of stuff, I don't remember what it was, and, and..." Ialion's lips trembled. "Nil Sag'ma... shapeshifted."

"What? What do you mean he shapeshifted?" Layalith asked.

"He... _he turned into a dreadlord_!" he cried out, as if still terrorized by Nil Sag'ma's presence.

The effect of his words was instant. My breath caught in my throat, and Layalith sunk back into her seat.

I was the first one to talk. "A dreadlord... damn it. Ialion, are you sure?" A dreadlord? By the Light, I'd been around a dreadlord?

He nodded. "Yeah, I'm sure. No doubt about it, he was a dreadlord. He and Kil'jooden - "

"Jaeden," I interrupted.

"- Jooden kept talking, and when they were done, Nil Sag'ma turned back to an orc and vanished in a puff of black smoke. Then I flew back here. Amanthe, he was so scary! Just being around him made me freeze up!"

"Layalith, what do you think about this?"

"I, I don't... how did I not see this? Of _course_ being around Nil Sag'ma would make us so afraid. Dreadlords spread fear and terror through lesser foes with just their presence, it's been documented. Only those strong of will, like the Warchief, or the Kingslayers, are immune to this effect. How did I not see this?"

"It makes even more sense if you keep thinking about it. You know how I told you about Ros'fon, and how I healed him?" She nodded. "The things he mumbled about, it all fits. Tainted wings, corrupted claws. Where he walks, tiny nipping and biting shadows run infront of him."

"Their carrion swarms. The dreadlords that attacked Hyjal were seen using that attack."

"It gets worse. Nightmares fall from his corrupted claws. Dreadlords _were_ said to be able to put people to sleep, and I'd bet they don't give pleasant dreams either."

"The nightmares on the Valley!"

I raised an eyebrow at Layalith's outburst. "Hmm?"

"The nightmares the Valley of Wisdom's been experiencing. Nil Sag'ma's presence would make people have nightmares, in an even bigger aura than his fear one. He'd project the nightmares somewhere so that people couldn't track him down with that, use magic to make his nightmare aura affect only a certain place no matter where he was, so that the guard wouldn't be able to narrow down his position. That's why the Valley's been having nightmares." She gulped. "If the Legion deigned to send a dreadlord, here, to Orgrimmar, then something _big_ is going to go down. We need help. Dreadlords are slippery bastards. We can't just tell the guard about him, though, for two reasons."

"What would that be?"

"Have you ever been around Malg?"

I nodded. "Yeah, I tried to tell him about the invasion, but being around him made... me... afraid."

"Just like Nil Sag'ma."

"Wait, I remember now!" came Ialion. Both of us looked up at him. "The dreadlord, he said he's the leader of both the guard _and_ the cultists. That's how he's been keeping the guard from attacking!"

"Shit!" said Layalith. "Okay, we definitely can't tell the guard. Nil Sag'ma will just discredit our theory of him being a dreadlord, and murder us in our sleep."

"But won't they at least try to test the theory?" I asked.

She shook her head. "No, they'll try, but they'll fail. Amanthe, _I_, a paladin of the Holy Light, could not figure out his secret after being around him for seven months. They won't figure it out. We need to kill the dreadlord, stop him from carrying out his machinations, but how? I've seen him fight, he's too much for us, way too much. We'd need the Kingslayers to fight him, and dreadlords are smart. If we somehow get Garrosh to attack him, he'll just teleport away. Any ideas?"

"Well, I have one."

"Please, do tell."

"Selriona's powerful, I mean, she helped fight against Deathwing. And besides, I need to tell her about this anyway."

"Good, you do that."

_'Selriona!' _I shouted into the link, letting my panic at the idea of having been so close to a _dreadlord_ for a little over a month show.

I was greeted with a sleepy, _'Mrr? Nng, wha?'_

_'This is no time for sleeping! WAKE UP, you big sack of scales!'  
><em>

_'Alright, alright, I'm up. What's going on?'  
><em>

_'Well, Ialion got some information when he snuck out, and it turns out we have got a BIG problem! You know Nil Sag'ma?'  
><em>

_'That orc corrupted by the Legion?'  
><em>

_'Yeah, well, turns out he's not corrupted by the Legion. Ialion caught him turning into a fucking dreadlord! Nil Sag'ma is a dreadlord, and there is no way - '  
><em>

_'He's a WHAT?'  
><em>

_'It gets worse. He's not just the leader of the cult. He's also head of the guard. He's got control over _everything_.'_

_'Oh, oh SHIT! Amanthe, just sit tight. Do not try to confront Nil Sag'ma. Dreadlords are bad news. Just sit tight, and stay out of his way. Go to the cultist meeting tomorrow in case he's planning anything else, but stay out of his way, alright?'  
><em>

_'I will.'  
><em>

_'Alright, good. Just hang in there. Help is on the way.' _The connection faded.

"Alright, she says that help is on the way, and that we need to just hang in there. We'll go to the cultist meeting tomorrow. If Nil Sag'ma has any other plans, we can learn about them then. But we have to stay out of his way."

Layalith shook her head. "No, we don't. We can't let him know that anything is wrong. He'll be suspicious if we do. Just act the same way you always do around him. Stopping the invasion's out of the question now. A dreadlord's plans can't just be stopped like that, especially not so close, so we need to minimize the damage and above all else, keep him from getting what he wants. Your patron's sending help, right?"

"Yeah. If I know Selriona, which I do, she's probably gonna come here herself. She's young, younger than us, so she likes getting her claws dirty. But, she does have a brood to watch out for, so I don't know."

The paladin nodded. "I am going home to prepare. Sharpen my sword, take my armor to the blacksmith, those sort of things. I'll go tell the Kor'kron, hopefully they can help. Amanthe, get ready. I have a feeling things are going to get extremely bad."

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<br>**


	9. Chapter 9:Half Ascended

**Disclaimer: I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.  
><strong>

**Massive thanks to Dusty the Umbravita for being my beta.  
><strong>

**Chapter published 5/12/12  
><strong>

* * *

><p><span>Amanthe<span>

I took a deep breath, making sure everything was ready.

Hunger taken care of? Check.

Hydrated? Check.

Orb of Deception secure? Check.

I turned from the cupboards to Ialion. "Alright, here I go."

He eyed me from where he sat on the table, a crack still running through it. "Be careful, Amanthe. I mean, this is a _dreadlord!_"

I groaned, rubbing my temples. "You don't have to remind me. But it'll be fine. As long as I don't give away that I know the truth about him, Nil Sag'ma won't do anything to me. Right?" I walked over to him and patted his head soothingly. "Hey, I'll be _fine_, alright? This is just a regular run of the mill meeting. And this time, Layalith and I know we're on the same side. Okay? We'll be fine!"

"But, Nil Sag'ma told the guard he'll have them attack the cultists tomorrow, and he told the cultists he'll attack in two days. What if he lied to them both? What if he's doing the invasion _today?_"

I shook my head. "I don't think he's ready for that. I mean, last I checked the elemental boxes aren't in position. He needs to get those ready, and that's another day _at best._ At the most, he's going to cause the attack tomorrow, or maybe even postpone the guard's attack. He was lying to _somebody_, that's for sure."

"But what if he does go today?"

I hesitated. "Then we're in... trouble. Nil Sag'ma is a _dreadlord._ You said so yourself, Ialion. They're conniving and difficult to foil. If we'd figured out his identity earlier, then maybe we could've stopped him, but not like this. We figured it out only yesterday. That's not enough time to corner him. Especially if he can just teleport like you mentioned."

Ialion nodded. "Just be careful, Amanthe."

"Relax, I will."

Ialion grimaced, then sighed. He got off the table and fluttered over to me, grabbing me by the neck with his forelegs and wrapping his wings around my head. "Got it. Have fun, Amanthe. Make sure to sabotage a lot of stuff!"

I stood there for a moment, unsure exactly on how to return the gesture to a whelpling, but in the end I patted Ialion's back. "For the hundredth time, I'll be fine. Now let me go, I need to get going." He did so. "Take care, Ialion. And no sneaking out this time."

He chuckled nervously in midair. "Sorry about that."

I smiled, and then walked outside, locking the door behind me. The skies of Orgrimmar were sunny, but several white and fluffy clouds built upwards rapidly in the warm weather. If they continued like that, there'd be a storm. Shrugging and thinking nothing of it, I continued towards the gate. Brightly colored pieces of paper were strung from building to building, and I noticed several Horde children running around, no doubt looking for colorful eggs while adults watched them from afar. I passed the guards with the cast of a mind soothe, and I soon had a companion. I felt a stab of guilt through my heart as I turned to see that it wasn't Saltio walking next to me, but Layalith instead.

"You ready for this, _human?_"

I nodded, ignoring her jab. "Ready as I'll ever be. What's the plan, here?"

"I've spoken to the Kor'kron. They are now aware of the situation, and are getting those who can deal with dreadlords rallied. I expect they'll attack the cultists before it's too late."

"And the two of us?"

"We're going to mess things up as best we can in the meantime, just in case. Never can be too safe with demons. They're masters of trickery. I didn't think I'd need to get the Kor'kron involved beforehand, but this is much more serious than I'd realized."

"So, what exactly are we going to do?"

"First off, we need to get there. Get the lay of the land. But in general, I've got the destruction of several elemental boxes in mind. When the Kor'kron gets here, we don't want the cultists using the elementals for defense."

I nodded. "Good, good. I think I can see the tents up ahead." I did; the diminutive spires of violet shelter seemed all the more intimidating now that I knew who pulled the strings behind them, the demon that lurked below the surface.

Layalith frowned. "Hmm. And what about your patron, human?"

"First of all, I have a name. Second of all, if I know her, and I_ do_, she's on her way here herself. Mark my words. Now be quiet! We're here!"

"Remember, act natural." As soon as the first of the Twilight's Hammer guards got within earshot of us, a scowl became the dominant feature on Layalith's face. "I told you, Amanthe, I don't need _any_ help with binding the elementals. Now make like a tree and _leave!_" Taking the hint, I separated from her. I was about to enter the camp when a forsaken man stopped me. Try as I might, I couldn't help but stare at the black cross on his face.

"Hey," he said, his voice cracking and hollow. "What are you still doing out here? Nil Sag'ma is giving a speech, go listen!"

I frowned. "He is?"

The guard nodded. "Yeah, shame I don't get to listen to it. Now what are you still standing around here for? Move it!" I clenched my fists, but suppressed the urge to shred the wretched cultist's mind with my spells, and pushed deeper into the camp. I'd done this a dozen times before. Why was it so much harder now?

A hundred cultists, all in violet robes, were lined up in front of Nil Sag'ma's tent. A slab of elevated earth held the three leaders of this branch of the Twilight's Hammer cult. Nil Sag'ma stood tall and proud in the middle, ripples of fear radiating outward from him and making my courage crumble, him looking out at the assembled cultists below him with a terrifyingly intelligent malice in his eyes. To his right stood Glidia, the goblin shaman being rather unremarkable next to the towering monolith of an 'orc' next to her, but even so I knew her strength as a shaman; she was, after all, the one who lifted that slab of earth for the three of them in the first place. Finally, to the disguised dreadlord's left stood Ros'fon, the troll mage so different now from the vacant-eyed, babbling man he'd been when I first saw him, confident and a malicious joker.

My eyes caught Layalith's, standing on the other side of the assembled mass, also in the back. She looked back at me, and nodded.

A deep, rumbling voice cut through the air, making my skin tremble and forcing all noise to stop, everybody all at once looking up at the owner of the voice. "You have all been working diligently. The elemental containers have been stockpiled within my tent, and I am rather pleased with how many we have accumulated. In excess of a hundred, each one holding a dozen or so elementals. You know the plan, but to those who may have forgotten, we are to unleash the elementals upon the unsuspecting city of Orgrimmar, causing death and destruction. However, there is one thing I have not mentioned to you all. There is among us, a spy." Under normal circumstances, this would've caused mumbling to erupt in such a crowd, but Nil Sag'ma's presence forbade such a thing. "I have managed to catch wind of the plan the guard takes to subdue us; tomorrow, they will attack, and the day after tomorrow was the day we planned to carry out the elemental invasion."

His eyes flashed to me, and at Layalith, making bile rise in my throat. _He knew._ "Which is why we are doing it _now,_" he said, looking awau from us.

_Now?_ My eyes snapped around to Layalith, who also looked at me. "Now?" she mouthed.

"I don't know!" I mouthed back. Ialion had been right! He was carrying out the invasion _today_! I looked back at Nil Sag'ma.

"We shall carry out the elemental invasion post-haste. It has been my plan for a while to do such a thing, but I have not told you, for the spy among us would surely have heard and told our plans to the guard." He smiled in Layalith's direction knowingly. Oh, no doubt about it, he knew. "But that time has come to an end. Today, we shall invade Orgrimmar. We are doing it now. All of you, you know the plan. Go prepare the elemental invasion, whilst I deal with the spy in our midst. Now, go, and bring glory to our dark masters. I have moved the elemental boxes to the location we discussed, Glidia."

Glidia coughed. "Alright, y-you've heard the man. Follow me! Let's go!" Glidia and Ros'fon jumped off the elevated slab of rock and began to lead the cultists away. I caught up with Layalith at the back of the crowd.

"We're doing it _now?_ This is bad! The guard's not prepared for this!"

"Don't tell me what I know, Amanthe! We need to go warn them. Come on, let's go!" I saw Layalith tense her legs to sprint, but before she could, a rumbling voice, like boulders rolling down a mountain, stopped us in our tracks. The fear that had been radiating from Nil Sag'ma increased.

"And where do you think you're going?" We turned around to see the dreadlord in disguise a fair ways from me. "Oh, not you, Layalith. By all means, go on, help them. However, I am afraid I must speak with Amanthe. Privately."

My heart skipped a beat. "M-m-me?"

"Yes, you. There is a situation I must resolve."

"I'm sorry, s-sir, but I insist on staying with Amanthe." I looked towards her and shook my head. If Nil Sag'ma wanted to kill me, then her help wouldn't make a difference. No sense in us both dying. Besides, maybe that's not what he wanted. I wondered what made me act so selflessly. Was it the demon's aura of fear, and me overcompensating for it?

"Oh, I'm afraid that's not possible, Layalith. Do not worry for your friend. I assure you, no physical harm shall come to her." That wasn't exactly reassuring. "Now, run along. Unless you are the spy within our midst?" he asked, flashing a brilliant smile.

Layalith took one look at me, mouthed 'I'll get help', and ran away as fast as her legs could carry her, leaving me alone. If Nil Sag'ma saw that, he wasn't exactly worried about it.

With Nil Sag'ma.

"Come, Amanthe. Let us take this elsewhere." I didn't want to go with him, but I was too afraid of him to disobey. Like a lost puppy, I followed after him as he led me deeper into the cultist camp, and eventually around the back of his tent, in its shadow. He looked at me, still a good three meters away, and smiled. "Now, Amanthe, I believe it is time I kept you from interfering." Bile rose in the back of my throat, and I began tensing my feet to run, however far that would get me. "Oh, relax. I have no intentions to kill you."

"W-what do you want?"

"Oh, well, that's rather simple. I want to carry out phase one of our plan by stealing a relic from Orgrimmar, a rather rare one." He made a motion towards me, and at that moment I bolted, weaving a shell of holy Light around me, feeling the extra strength in my muscles, letting me run faster than before.

It didn't do me any good. I hadn't taken ten steps when I felt a rope-like spell wrap around my feet, tripping me and making me fall. I barely got up when I became paralyzed with fear, thick tendrils of horror snaking around my limbs and locking them in place. Nil Sag'ma calmly walked around me into my field of vision, much closer than before. How could I hope to get away from him? He didn't even need magic to render me helpless. All he had to do was get closer to me, and I'd be helpless. I _was_ helpless. He smirked at me, and shook his head, like I was a disobedient child. "Tsk, tsk, tsk. We can't have you running away, can we now?" He lifted his left hand, and for a brief moment shadows writhed around it. When they stopped, my shield disintegrated.

I struggled to speak, but it was like somebody had dumped sand into my mouth and throat. "W-what do you want from me?" I managed to choke out amongst my heavy breathing. "W-why me?"

"Ah, that, little human, is an excellent question." I was about to ask how he knew about my race, but decided not to. He was a dreadlord, of course he could see through that. How long had he known? "You see, you are not the only one capable of crafting illusions," he answered as if reading my mind. "It is something I am quite capable of myself." That's right, just keep him talking. Stall him. "Now, as to what I want from you, I simply want you to not interfere. After all, we can't have you using the power of twilight flame to oppose the invasion. The water elementals in particular do not fair well against that, as you have figured out."

"What are you going to... to... ?"

"Do not fear, I have no intent to harm you, physically at least. I shall get to that. Now, I must ask you, exactly how long have you been a Dragonsworn? It is nothing important, but an idle curiosity of mine. Besides, I have time to spare before the cultists get the invasion set up. Entertain me." Ha, right, he just wanted to see me squirm for as long as possible.

"Rot i-in the deepest, darkest _eeeh!_" I wasn't able to finish my sentence. With an idle, lazy movement of his foot, Nil Sag'ma closed the gap in between us by one small step. The coils of terror around me tightened like a rope, my muscles clenching painfully around my bones, my tongue held to the roof of my mouth. My breathing sped up, and I devolved into a pile of whimpers and gasps as I tried to get away from him, to no avail.

"Now, is that any way to speak to your superiors? I've been quite patient with you, little mortal. Now, you shall tell me what I want to know."

_So polite. He's taunting me._ I struggled against the grasp his presence had on my body, but to no avail. "Oh, I'm sorry, am I making you uncomfortable?" he asked me. He took a step back, loosening his hold on me ever so slightly. Not enough for me to run, not even to so much as move a finger, but enough for me to talk.

"A l-little over a, a year." I gasped again, whimpering. Images flashed through my mind as he took a step back in towards me, once again restricting me to standing there, whimpering and gasping helplessly. In my mind I saw a massive rain of fire coming down over a lush jungle, burning it to cinders. Worse than that, I saw horrible fates. Myself being disemboweled, or burned at the stake, any number of gruesome deaths.

"Hmm, how curious. I wonder what the Twilights have been up to. But then, it is of no concern to me. Even if your patron does show up, what is a mere dragon to _me? _All I care about is getting the relic from within Orgrimmar, and then your friends can do whatever they want. But, here is the problem. Twilight fire is a potent resource." I tried desperately to wrench control of my body from the terror and escape. With a titanic effort, I managed to move a foot back, but it was in vain. He took another step towards me, making the grip of mind-numbing terror on me strengthen until it was a struggle to even breathe, Nil Sag'ma so close I could feel the scorching heat of the flames coming off his headpiece. I could've smelled his breath if it weren't overshadowed by the stench of smoke._  
><em>

"At any rate, I must soon be going. I must make sure Orgrimmar is in proper chaos. As for you, well. I can't let you go stop us. Layalith is not enough of a threat, so she is lucky. If anything, she will help stir up even more chaos through her opposition. Consider yourself fortunate, mortal. Normally, I would take this opportunity to strike you down where you stand, helpless and terrified beyond self-defense. However, I find it likely I shall need to conserve my energy, just in case something does happen, and it takes less energy for me to simply put you to sleep than to kill you." His voice cut through the air around me, making the ground shake gently with each syllable, wearing against my soul like a hurricane against a tree.

He leaned in, his face so close our noses nearly touched, making the choking, crushing grasps of dread around me tighten to the crushing point, my muscles clenching so hard it felt like a needle was pushed into them, my breaths coming in short, shallow gasps like a fish out of water. Any attempt I made to free myself from his aura was in vain; my muscles wouldn't obey me, my magic slipped away as if it was too scared of the dreadlord to come to me, and the link to Selriona wouldn't work. I was utterly helpless, and that fact did not help me escape the terror.

"Sweet dreams, little mortal." Out of the corners of my eye, I saw Nil Sag'ma's hands glow a smoky green, before a wall of exhaustion smashed down on me. I tried in vain to fight the spell, which I knew from his words had to be a sleep spell. But it was in vain. The fear radiating from the dreadlord didn't abate, and the weight of the spell on me was akin to a dragon slowly laying on me. I fought to stand against the crushing strength of the spell, but it was for naught. My legs gave out from under me, and I fell to the ground like a rag doll, the bottom of the disguised demon's robes dominating my vision. I saw my own hand splayed out limply, green mist floating around my body. The spell's iron grip on my mind tightened, and I couldn't fight it any longer. The world faded to black, with Nil Sag'ma's sinister chuckling all I had to hear before falling asleep.

* * *

><p>I got up, legs shaking, and looked around. Nil Sag'ma was gone. The tents were gone. Orgrimmar was gone. There was nothing around me except for an endless red desert.<p>

And in that desert, an army of rats, some standing on their hind legs, noses raised and sniffling. Some on all fours, shaking themselves like wet dogs. All squeaking, all chattering.

I screamed.

Once the initial rush of paralyzing fear ran out, I _ran_, casting a levitate over myself to keep from running through the mass of vermin. The air turned solid under my feet as I ran, faster than ever before, as the massive tide of rodents followed me, squeaking and hissing, but unable to reach me. A few of them jumped at me, making me squeak and weave a barrier over me, forcing them to fall off. Soon, I came to an enormous cliff, with the dark sea churning far below, frothy waves crashing into jagged spires of black stone and making spray fly into the air. I skidded to a halt on the air beneath me just before falling off. A chunk of rock cracked and fell. I couldn't even see the splash.

Turning back around, I saw the tide of rats closing in on me, and before I could think about what I was doing, I jumped away from them, falling into the ocean. The levitate spell vanished, and I plummeted.

The rush of air tore the breath from my lungs, keeping me from screaming. Sharp towers of rock tumbled in and out of my vision as I thrashed about, the waves seemed to laugh at me, and then I slammed into the water.

The force with which I hit the water sent an explosion of agony through my limbs. Oh gods, where were my legs? Did I still have them? I sunk deeper and deeper, the thrashing currents forcing me deeper and deeper. Light vanished, making me obscured in all directions with darkness, even as I felt the waves battering me too and fro, bashing me into rocks, until with one great thrust from the ocean, my back hit a smooth stone behind me.

Instantly the water around me vanished, and I slid down, sopping wet. Light turned on, illuminating where I was. A small, room with white walls, shaped like the top half of an egg. I blinked, looking around from where I sat at the circular wall. In the middle was Selriona sitting in her mortal form, her back to me but whenever I tried to get a good look at her, she kept changing. One moment she was an orc, then a draenei, then a human, and so on and so forth, her features melting into each other smoothly, and as soon as she was done shifting, I forgot how she'd looked before.

"Selriona?" I got up and walked towards her. The moment I was within arm's length, she whirled around, her form that of a blood elf. A giant gaping maw replaced her mouth, her skin was pale and ashen like the undead's, and in her mouth were a pair of wicked-looking fangs. She shrieked at me, a horrible, blood curdling noise, and then pounced, biting at my arm. Her fangs cut clean through the skin, then the bone, and out the other side. I choked on my breath as she took her fangs out of my arm, before I collapsed backwards. As my back hit the ground, the ceiling caved in and crushed me, obscuring all sight.

The weight on my chest vanished, and I felt myself floating upwards in a steady void, like I was rising in a viscous fluid, but when I got close to breaking the surface and being freed, a shadowy force pulled me back into the depths.

I found myself on a battlefield. In the air above me, dragons and drakes from all five Flights fought skeletal dragons against a sky overcast with blood-red clouds. I stood on pale, cracked stone, swaying. All around me, battles raged. Orcs, humans, goblins, and so many other races fought against each other, but half of the army was covered in thick, swirling shadows, and left flames where they stepped. The hundreds of duels took place all around me, but none within fifteen paces of me. I simply stood there, entranced by the fighting on the ground and in the air, the sound of roars, metal hitting metal, shouts for order, war cries and the occasional _boom_ of an artillery shell I never saw filling the battlefield.

I focused my eyes, and saw a skeletal dragon swooping down at me, only for a Red dragon to shove it out of the way, out of my sight. No sooner had then skeletal wyrm been pushed, than I saw a tauren cloaked in shadows and leaving fire behind her, running towards me. The woman jumped, two daggers as long as my forearms in her hands, ready to strike me down as I just dumbly looked up at her. As she reached the top of her arc some of the shadows around her briefly parted to show that she wore armor made of cracked red stone. Then she came down, flames streaking behind her daggers. I finally reacted to the scene around me, and raised an arm to block the attack, as if my _arm _would protect me from daggers. The metal came down, cutting into my flesh, the fire it trailed -

* * *

><p><em>Slap.<em>

My eyes flew open, registering nothing but green for a moment, before it cleared away, like a cloud being blown apart by the wind. The green mist fizzled and vanished, letting me catch sight of a pale, somewhat jaunt face looking down at me. She raised her hand.

_Slap._

I gasped, sitting straight up._  
><em>

The face that had slapped me opened its mouth to speak. "She's awake! Thank the Titans!"

Another voice, this one without a face attached, spoke up, clearly impatient in its tone. "Well, good! Amanthe, stand up. We don't have time for this!"

I groaned and placed a hand to my head, momentarily blocking out Selriona's human face. "What? Where am I?" I felt two metal hands grip my shoulders and hoist me onto my feet, where I stumbled for a moment before regaining my balance.

I turned around to see Layalith stepping back from me, wearing her armor, with her red two-handed sword strapped to her back. "You're in the cultist camp, where you fell asleep. We've been trying to wake you up, when the dragon here decided to slap you, see if that would work. It did." I raised a hand to my stinging cheek. "Now, if you're done being sleepy, _ORGRIMMAR IS UNDER ATTA__CK!_"

I turned back around to Selriona, who's regular violet robes had been replaced by dark blue plate armor, with bits of twilight energy flowing along it in places, leaving no more than her face exposed. Parts of her body faded in and out of transparency, like she were too nervous to stay entirely in the physical realm. "What did I miss?" I asked.

"Well, I went to go warn the Kor'kron, and once I did, I ran back here to see how you were. I ran into your patron on the way, and we've been trying to wake you up."

I stepped back so that I could see both the elf and the dragon at once. Selriona said, "Amanthe, while we were trying to wake you up, well, I feel you should know this. You know how I said that I felt like I'd heard Nil Sag'ma's name before?"

"Yeah, why?"

Layalith sighed. "Amanthe, you weren't put to sleep by just _an_y dreadlord. You were put to sleep by _Mal'ganis._ I had an epiphany while we were trying to awaken you. Nil Sag'ma is an anagram for Mal'ganis. You're lucky you ever woke up at all."

I let out a strangled groan. "Mal'ganis... shit. He's been right under our noses the whole time. We have to stop him!"

Layalith sighed. "Finally. Now, let's go! We have to stop him before he attains whatever goal he has."

Selriona nodded. "Right. Follow me, I can track his corruption."

"Wait!" I said. "Ialion - "

"Is safe. I put him in the twilight realm in, well, I guess you could say he's having a time-out." I breathed a sigh of relief. "Now, follow me!" Selriona began to run for Orgrimmar, Layalith and I behind her. I noticed the sky was much darker than before, with a rumble of thunder cutting through it It was night-time? Damn, I'd been asleep for a _while. _Even from this distance, I could see fires burning in the city, sending smoke into the air.

_'Nil Sag'ma - I mean, Mal'ganis, he went early!' _Selriona sent to me, so she wouldn't waste her breath talking to me.

_'Don't have to tell me twice, Selriona! He's been planning this the whole time. He had control of the guard, so he could keep the cultists from being attacked. And he's using the cultists as a diversion. He wants to steal something. Some relic, I think. I can't remember, he screwed with my head pretty bad.'  
><em>

_'Great. Just great.'  
><em>

_'He knew about me. Light damn it, he knew I'm a Dragonsworn! What else does he know?'_

_'I don't know, but I do know that I'm going to kill him.'  
><em>

_'He wasn't exactly worried about a dragon attacking him. He told me that himself. But then, he did seem rather eager to keep his strength up.'  
><em>

_'Yeah, well, I'm stronger than most. Maybe he was bluffing.'  
><em>

"So, what's the plan here?" Layalith interrupted us.

My friend looked back at her, ears lengthening as she shifted into a blood elf. The gates of Orgrimmar loomed infront of us, the guards normally at their posts gone to fight off the elementals. "Well, the plan is I use the twilight realm to follow Mal'ganis's trail of corruption, fight our way through the elementals, and kill him before he can get whatever he's here for."

"Sounds like a plan. Do you know how to kill a dreadlord?"

"Not exactly," the Twilight dragon admitted. "But I can keep him from teleporting, that much I know how to do. The plan right now is to reach him, and I'll shift to my true form and engage him in melee. He won't be able to beat me that way."

"And when he uses magic?" Layalith asked.

"Let him try. Shadow magic won't harm me." We passed through the gates of Orgrimmar into the city, which was in absolute chaos. Civilians ran too and fro, desperately trying to avoid the water elementals surging after them. Guards battled the living fluids with axes, arrows and spells, jets of water cut buildings in half, causing them to fall on top of a group of archers fighting off a dozen cultists.

"We can't go through in the twilight realm!" I shouted. "We won't have warning if a building falls on us."

"Right!" Selriona shouted as a water elemental surged up infront of us. Without even stopping, she held up her hands, letting a river of dark blue fire wash out and instantly vaporize the elemental.

_'You might want to conserve your mana.'_

_'Right, good point,' _she sent back to me. A shower of water erupted next to me, sending Layalith flying into the air, flailing wildly as she tried to regain control. As she fell I cast a levitation spell on her to prevent any bones from breaking.

"Thanks. Come on, we need to go! Which way's Mal'ganis?"

Selriona hesitated for a moment, fading slightly out of the physical realm. "This way," she said, bolting off in the direction of the Valley of Honor. Layalith and I followed after her, dodging between duels and leaping away from exploding geysers as we struggled to keep up with Selriona, whose draconic strength allowed her legs to propel her faster than us. As we began to exit the Valley of Strength, a massive creaking sounded above us. We all stopped in a group as a massive chunk of blazing wood and metal crashed down, blocking off our path.

"Whoa!" Layalith shouted, steadying herself before she impaled herself on a jagged piece of iron.

"Come on!" Selriona shouted, already climbing over the obstacle, hurling girders and planks off like they were nothing. "We need to keep going!"

Without word, I followed after her, allowing myself a glance backwards at the Valley of Strength. It seemed like the Kor'kron had the situation under control, the elite warriors cleaving elementals apart left and right. Sometimes a piece of the Skyway collapsed, flattening the unsuspecting individuals below.

We weaved through the Drag, where the battle was going much worse than in the Valley of Strength. Shops left and right crackled with flame. Fire and water elementals combined their attacks to project razor-sharp beams of steam, burning and slicing the civilians running too and fro in addition to the guards attempting to hold them off in vain. There weren't enough of Orgrimmar's guards here to stop them.

_'We should help them, Selriona. We can't let them distract us when we're fighting Mal'ganis!'_

_'What about the Valley of Honor?'_

_'They Valley of Honor has a lot of fighters. It can hold its own, but the Drag...'_

_'Good point. And besides, from his glow in here it looks like he's slowing down.' _She skidded to a stop and charged at a guard fighting a fire elemental, and brought up a hand to the capacitor around her neck. A bolt of arcane energy flew out of it and smashed into the living inferno, making it roar and stagger back. Layalith charged after two water elementals, and I ran after her to help, weaving a shell of Light around her and sinking into my shadowform. With a roar, her sword gleamed with the Light as she slashed horizontally at one of the water beings, disrupting it and making it lurch. I immediately began blasting the other one, battering it with shadow energies that I collected and then used to heal the guards and civilians around me.

Once that one was dead, I put my hands together and began to pull my magic around me, forming a massive ball of dark blue fire in my hands. Layalith had the other elemental handled, and from what I could see out of the corner of my eye, Selriona was tearing the elementals apart with a sword she'd pulled off a dead guard and infused with twilight energy. I finished casting the twilight pyroblast and sent it after another water elemental, one pursuing an orc woman with a white bundle in her arms. The spell impacted, and with a whoosh of violet-tinted steam, the elemental vanished. Before turning around, I quickly wove a shell of light around the fleeing civilian.

Within a few minutes, the elemental presence in the Drag had been weakened, and we wasted no time in regrouping. "Alright!" Layalith shouted, waving her hand forward. "Let's go, move it!" The guard was holding its own against the elementals, so we dashed for where Selriona saw Mal'ganis to be, jumping over piles of collapsed wood and metal, and the occasional elemental core. The Valley was nearly in sight when a massive explosion shook Orgrimmar, sending the three of us down to our feet. Layalith and Selriona took off soon after, but a second shock sent me back down before I could get up. They didn't notice I wasn't following them until it was too late. They stopped and turned around, mouths agape. That was all I saw of them before an avalanche of debris blocked me off from them.

"Damn it!" I yelled, scrambling back.

_'Amanthe, hang tight, I'm - '_

_'No! Go stop Mal'ganis. We've wasted enough time in the Drag. I'll catch up with you! Go!'  
><em>

A pause. _'Alright. Titans watch over you.'_

I began to look for a way to go around the debris when I felt a tingle in the back of my neck, the tingle that you get when somebody is right behind you. I ducked, a fireball sailing over my head and crashing into the barrier of rubble. I turned around to see who had assaulted me, expecting a fire elemental. Instead, I saw Saltio, standing amidst a ring of ash.

Her eyes had turned into glowing orange orbs, with the tangerine color spreading from her eyes across her face like cracks. More of the orange marks streaked the fur around her hands. Her once white horns were a sooty gray, the dull points now sharp as a sword. The brown spots on her white-turned-gray fur flickered, tiny embers spreading and dying along them. Fire crackled in her hands as she approached me, face murderous. She wore orange robes, patterned with the insignia of the Twilight's Hammer, but looked like a blazing bonfire. Smoke poured off her arms, adding to the increasingly acrid atmosphere above the city.

"Saltio?" I asked as she stopped, a fireball growing steadily in each of her hands.

"Hello, Amanthe," she growled.

* * *

><p><span>Selriona<span>

"Come on, come on!" I shouted to Layalith as we ran through the Valley of Honor. The small portion of my essence in the twilight realm saw the red glow of Mal'ganis's taint turned to move alongside the left wall of buildings, which were on fire. The river that wound through the Valley reflected the fires spreading along the buildings as fire elementals rampaged, making it look like a river of flame. The paladin and I continued to sprint, dodging in between the guards and the fire elementals as we closed in on the dreadlord.

I worried about Amanthe. She'd been left behind in that collapse, and who knew what had happened to her afterwards? I wanted to ask her using the link, but what if she was in a fight? I'd distract her, and she could be seriously hurt, or worse.

"Hey!" I heard the blood elf shout behind me. "Slow down, dragon! Not all of us can run like that!" I growled, but waited for the mortal to catch back up with me. Another explosion rocked Orgrimmar. I caught sight of a group of guards around a mage, fighting off cultists and fire elementals around them. I resisted the urge to help them; Mal'ganis was a powerful dreadlord. I needed to conserve my energy. I didn't doubt my ability to defeat Mal'ganis and banish him back to the Nether, but that didn't mean I could be cocky. I'd regret it in the end. Slowly, the trail of demonic corruption within the twilight realm grew stronger and stronger, and within minutes I saw Mal'ganis in his orcish form, proceeding through the streets of Orgrimmar. He skidded to a stop infront of a building's door, a door with the symbol of the Horde meshed with that of the Alliance, with a sword and staff crossed over it.

"Alright," I growled to myself. I let my illusion fall off me, mortals seeing me be damned. My tusks unsheathed themselves with a _shwing_. I climbed along piles of rubble as he stood, robes smoldering, and fired a blast at him. With a wave of his hand, he deflected the twilight fireball, and unfurled into his own true form. I felt a slight wave of magical fear run through me, but I fought it down and cast a lockdown spell on him, preventing him from teleporting. Layalith ran ahead at Mal'ganis, sword raised in the air and gleaming with the Light.

Big mistake. No sooner had I finished weaving protective magics around myself than Mal'ganis thrust out his hands at Layalith. A cresting fel green wave shot out of his hands, tiny insects buzzing into and out of existence in it. The carrion swarm shot out and hit the paladin full force, knocking her back like a rag-doll to land behind me as the spell broke harmlessly around my shield. I didn't hear her get up.

I roared at him, and placed a twilight prison under him. Before the magical trap could grab hold of him, he deftly flapped his wings, sailing backwards out of the trap, throwing shadow bolts at me, which served to do nothing more than break my shield, and then splash harmlessly along my shadow-resistant scales. I pounced at him, claws outstretched and ready to rend him to pieces.

I never got the chance. The dreadlord swept himself underneath me, in between my claws, and delivered an uppercut to my jaw. I hissed, pulling up, and swiped my right paw at him. I connected, and grinned in delight as I felt one of my claws bury into demonic flesh instead of plate armor as I tossed him aside into a building. The destroyer of Stratholme groaned as he pulled himself out of the structure, ducking under another fireball from me.

"Winged lizard. I don't have time for this!" He put his arms together and folded his wings around himself like a cocoon, shadow energy whirling around his hands. I wasn't worried when he flared out his wings to complete the spell. After all, it was shadow magic.

That was my mistake. A boulder crashed into the top of my head, pressing my horns into my head briefly. I roared and reared back, shaking my head to relieve the pain as an explosion of blistering heat exploded infront of me. The boulder that had impacted into me swirled around, felflame crackling around it, until a towering infernal stood in its place, reaching up to the bottom of my head. I pulled it into the twilight realm and sunk partway into it, where I then swiped a claw through it, my enhanced strength ripping it clean in two.

I looked back at Mal'ganis, who had just completed casting another spell, and was now throwing balls of felfire at me, which I absorbed with a freshly woven twilight shield. A shimmering red portal opened behind him, in between him and the guild hall of the Liberality Confederacy. A felguard emerged, and Mal'ganis commanded it in Demonic. It ran into the building, ducking under a fireball from me and out of sight. More demons came out of the portal; felguards and felhounds, succubi and shivara, all standing around Mal'ganis, moving to attack me. I growled and reached my magic into them, grasping inside of them and _ripping_ the light out of their bodies, tugging them into the twilight realm where I destroyed most of them with a bolt of twilight lightning. The final one, a shivara, I finished off by pulling out what light remained inside of her out. The demonic female shrieked in agony once, and then instantly fell limp.

Mal'ganis didn't get pulled in, however. I managed to pull his light out of him, but he simply growled and stood his ground in the physical realm as more demons poured in.

This was not going to be easy.

* * *

><p><span>Amanthe<span>

"Saltio? What..." I narrowed my eyes at her form, ready to dodge at an instant should she choose to throw the two fully formed fireballs in her hands. "What happened to you?"

She scowled at me, a fresh wave of smoke rising from her arms as she did. "I got out of prison. No thanks to _you._"

"But, what's with the - "

"Oh, think I got out on my own? Of course not. But let's just say there are advantages to a fire elemental bonding its soul to you."

I took a step back, going through a myriad of spells in my mind, making sure I knew them. "You're an ascendant?"

She laughed harshly. "Oh, not quite. You need to eat elementium beforehand in order to properly bond. No, I'm just _stuck_ halfway there. Forever. You know, it's all become _so_ clear to me now. You _traitor_!" She brought her hands together, and with them, the two fireballs. They merged into a single large orb, which she hurled at me.

"Whoa!" I didn't have time to dodge, so instead I wove a shield of Light around me. The fireball smashed into it, destroyed the shield, and the remaining force made me stumbled back as I quickly patted out the fires along my stomach. I looked up at Saltio. She took a deep breath, standing on the balls of her feet for a moment. When she went back down, her arms became encased in flame. She roared, and ran at me, flames trailing where she stepped.

I jerked away from her, casting a shadow spell at her. A dark purple glow surrounded her as a plague began to devour her, but it didn't slow her down at all. She stopped when her attack missed me, and turned around to me with a feral look on her face. Before she could do anything else, I whispered a shadowy word at her. The word of pain should have made her collapse in agony, but the corners of her mouth barely even twitched. The flames along her arms condensed into her palms, which she held up at me. A river of fire burst from them, washing over the spot I had been a moment before.

"Aaah! Stay still, damn it!" She lunged at me, and _turned into flames_. She dashed at me, reappearing right infront of me, flames trailing on the ground behind her, and punched me in the face. I staggered back and wove another shield around me. I needed distance from her, however long that would last. Shadows pooled in my throat and I took a deep breath. But just as the scream left my mouth, Saltio turned into fire again and dashed far away. The psychic scream made her flinch a little, but nothing happened beyond my spells continuing to wear her down. I whispered another word of darkness, this one different from the other. Saltio's mouth, which had been open in a snarl, slammed shut. She staggered back, surprised at what had happened, and lunged forward. She looked at her hands, wondering what I had done to prevent her from dashing at me.

I used her surprise to nail her in the chest with a twilight fireball. She flew back, landing on her hands, letting me blast her with another fireball. True to my aim, that one connected as well, but the third one she rolled away from. I thrust out a hand, channeling my magic to attack her mind. She growled and raised one hand to her head, the other outstretched as if to hold off my attack. I kept the assault up, hacking and slashing at her with shadow energy, when the glow of her hands warned me it was time to dodge. A fireball sailed out and hit the spot my feet had been moments before.

Once I was a good five meters from the impact, I hazarded a glance back. The fireball had left a patch of flames, and as I watched, Saltio dashed into the middle of the flames. She raised her hands and the fire roared higher, then was siphoned into her. Before I could blast her mind with a singular shock of dark magic, she turned into flame again, this time to go straight up, where she briefly turned back into a tauren again to tuck into herself and turn into a blaze headed at my location. I jumped out of the way, but it wasn't enough. She turned back to 'normal' just before she hit the ground with a stomp, sending out a blast of fire in all directions and knocking me back into a pile of rubble like a rag doll.

I groaned, briefly shifting out of shadowform to heal myself, and looked up at her. Saltio raised herself from a crouch slowly, like she had just fallen a large distance and her legs hurt. She turned back at me, formed a fireball in both of her hands, and began hurling them at me, forming them just as fast as she made them. I dodge most of them, and absorbed the last one with another shield of light. I couldn't get distance from her, that was clear. She could close the distance in an instant.

"Saltio, stop! You don't have to do this!" I shouted to her. I didn't want to fight her. This was _Saltio._ The first one in Orgrimmar who'd been kind to me. I felt like I owed her something.

"Begging for mercy, are we?" she taunted, before dashing at me. She swung a flaming arm at me sideways, which I just ducked underneath and tripped her. She hit the ground, just in time for me to cast another word of pain onto her. She grimaced, which gave me the opening to blast her mind. She grunted, and dashed away from me. I followed her trail of flames as she dashed wildly over the Drag, the guards still fighting off the elementals, trying to anticipate her next move, a Twilight pyroblast growing in my hands.

Her next move was to stop a distance from me, and thrust her hands out sideways. A shell of smoke exploded from her hands, ashes and embers whirling around her. Before I could react, she dashed again, the ash shield momentarily vanishing. She reappeared closer to me, the shield still around her. I did the first thing that came to mind; I cast the Twilight pyroblast at Saltio.

The ball of smoke absorbed the attack and exploded, smoke flying into my eyes, unhindered by my barrier, but I had the presence of mind to close my mouth in time. I yelled and closed my burning eyes, swinging about aimlessly. A fireball exploded somewhere next to my shield. I swung that way, and met nothing. I cast a renewing spell on me, feeling the Light slowly siphoning the smoke out of my eyes.

_Not fast enough!_

I sunk back into my shadowform and fired an indigo fireball in a random direction, only to be greeted with a burning punch to the back of the head, diluted by my shadowy body but still incredibly painful.

"Come on, Amanthe! Don't tell me you can't do better than that!" I heard the _whoosh_ of flames behind me, and turned around to it, only to hear the same whoosh behind me a moment later. As I turned around to it, Saltio greeted me with a blazing hit in the stomach, forcing the wind out of me. I fell to the ground face down, coughing, my eyes slowly clearing up but still functionless.

A burning hot, furry hand grabbed me in the back of my neck and hoisted me up, before the world around me transformed into a searing inferno, flames ripping at my skin in all spots before stopping as Saltio finished the dash she took me on. I brought more shadows into my throat as Saltio, judging from the way she shifted her grip on me, prepared to throw me. I let loose another scream, this one affecting the partial ascendant. I wasted no time in calling upon the Light to heal me, feeling the ash recede from my eyes, letting me see again.

Saltio was still running around like a headless chicken, terrified from my spell. I promptly called my magic up again, ignoring the aching all around my body as I began to cast another twilight pyroblast. Saltio stopped running around just in time for the gargantuan fireball to smash her in the stomach, sending her spinning in the air. I cast another plague on her, and another word of pain, and began hacking at her mind again, keeping up the pain while I could. Before too long, though, Saltio broke my ability to channel a spell onto her by leaping upwards in flames, before once again tucking, rolling and dashing at me. I knew what was coming; she would smash the ground next to me and release a blazing inferno in all directions. I was ready for it this time; just knock her out of the air.

Saltio appeared next to me, one foot extended downwards to stomp the ground. I hurled another fireball at her, but she had other plans. Instead of stomping the ground like I'd expected, she turned into flames again, making the twilight fireball sail behind her. She dashed behind me, and I threw myself away just in time to avoid her punch; I felt the scorching wind from her attack.

"Agh! WHY WON'T YOU JUST DIE?" she howled at me. I scrambled back, looking at her. Flames burned along every inch of her being. Despite all the attacks I'd gotten in on her, she didn't sport much more than a gash here and there, and even that faded as the fires from burning buildings around her fed themselves into her. I groaned as she healed herself. Great. Just great. I got up, shaking from the battering she'd given me, and focused hard. I reached out into the Twisting Nether, and found what I was looking for. A little pool of darkness opened infront of me, and a slobbering, snarling shadowfiend crawled out, ready to do my bidding. I pointed a finger at Saltio.

"Dinner time."

With a snorting roar, the dark creature lunged at Saltio and began biting at her. She screamed and began blasting it with flames that all but slid off its leathery skin. I wasted no time in calling upon the Light to heal my injuries, feeling my mana pool replenish itself with every bite my minion landed. By the time Saltio kicked it away and blasted a fireball into its open mouth, exploding it from the inside, I'd healed all my injuries and my mana pool was completely replenished. And she was doing a lot worse for wear.

She looked at me, then down at her bite marks. "So, that's the way it is." She turned her body into fire again, and began dashing rapidly back and forth, keeping me unsure as to where she'd end up, before all at once she rematerialized infront of me. She thrust out her hands at my shield of Light, an explosion coming out of her hands, sending me flying back, dazed and defenseless. A geyser of fire exploded under me, sending me flying up, flailing wildly. Before I could levitate myself down safely, Saltio dashed up to me and grabbed me by my hair, and dashed again. Orgrimmar vanished, replaced by a whirling ocean of flames all around me, burning me before Saltio stopped the dash, letting my momentum send me forward, her grip on my hair tearing out a handful.

I screamed, and let loose another twilight blast at her. I was losing! I needed to do something. The guards weren't coming to help me; Selriona, Layalith and I had helped them with the elementals, but there was still a long way to go.

_'I could use some help!' _I shouted to Selriona desperately.

_'You and me both!'_

My hopes sank, and I looked back up at Saltio, and dodged a fireball, then another, and another. She kept her left arm outstretched, fireballs flying out of it like a gun, giving me no time to retaliate. I dodged another, and my eyes widened as a force like a battering ram smashed into my chest, sending me back to hit my head on the stone ground. I cursed. A pyroblast. While she distracted me with smaller fireballs, she'd been casting a pyroblast. How powerful had she become, bonding with a fire elemental? Before she'd had zero magical potential, and now she could cast two spells _at once? _Only the most skilled spell casters could do that.

My vision blurred, and my legs gave way. I fell to my knees, coughing as I tried to take the breath back into my lungs. My head throbbed, and the world seemed fuzzy from the hit to my head. I groaned miserably, and Saltio came up to me, grabbing me under the chin with one hand and forcing me to look up at her.

"This is all _your _fault! I could've been happy if it wasn't for you! I wouldn't have been arrested if you hadn't betrayed me! I trusted you, Amanthe! Damn it, _I trusted you!  
><em>Does that mean nothing to you? Well, too late for regrets!" Her other hand began to glow as a fireball materialized in it, poised to take off my head. I struggled feebly against her burning, debilitating grip, but to no avail.

"AAAAAAH!" Saltio's grip on me vanished as something cool and moist crashed down around her, splashing onto me. I scrambled out of the way as she fell onto her knees, steaming, the orange lines along her turned black in some places. Around her was a puddle of water, and behind her, Seer Liwatha, throwing aside an empty bucket and holding another, filled one.

Liwatha quickly took her place next to me as Saltio recovered, stumbling. She eyed Liwatha, then me, then the bucket of water. She stumbled again, and coughed up a bit of water. She fixed me with another glare.

"I'll be back. Just you wait, Amanthe. I'll be back." With that, Saltio turned into fire and dashed out of the Drag, leaving trails of fire in her wake. Reflexively, Seer Liwatha hurled the bucket of water when Saltio acted, only for it to go to waste. Once done, she placed the bucket aside and put a hand on my head, Light flowing from her into me, healing my burns.

"My apologies for taking so long. Are you alright?"

"Ungh. Perfect timing, Seer. Where were you?"

"Busy putting out the fires. I saw you fighting," _You mean losing._ "And came to help. Who was that?"

"That was Saltio. Apparently she's bonded with a fire elemental." Suddenly I remembered where I was, where Selriona was, the fact that she practically outright told me she was in trouble when I asked for help. "I need to get to the Valley of Honor, now!" I turned around the the barricade, only to see that Saltio's first fireball had ignited it, and now it was an impassible wall of burning wood and red hot metal. A roll of thunder passed through Orgrimmar.

"Follow me. I'll lead you there. Try to take it easy. You took a beating there, and my heals have had some diminishing returns on you."

"Alright. Lead the way," I told her.

* * *

><p><span>Selriona<span>

"Titans _damn_ it!" I shouted as a felguard's axe cut into my flank. I whipped my tail-club around and flattened it, before swiping my tail and sending several felhounds scattering. I dodged and whirled around, avoiding fireballs and axes, as well as Mal'ganis's own relatively weak felflame. Several times the guard had tried to intervene, but the dreadlord always sent them flying back with a carrion swarm, or put them to sleep to allow a felguard to easily decapitate them.

I drew energy from the twilight realm, letting shadows ripple over my scales, before a massive explosion of twilight energy exploded outwards from me, sending most of the demons back to whence they came from, but Mal'ganis simply winged himself out of range, and then back in range to resume attacking me. Those portals _had_ to go. I could easily kill Mal'ganis one on one, and he knew this.

Which was why he summoned an infernal, and it landed right on my left foreleg, breaking it.

I reared back with an agonized roar in the physical realm, and bit down on an imp within the twilight realm. While I reared back, one of the doomguards took the opportunity to stab at my exposed stomach with its barbed spear. The spear entered, luckily not hitting anything overly important, and came back out as I fell back to all fours. I roared again, weaker this time, as I sunk further into the twilight realm to protect myself, and to draw on its energies to heal. Sure enough, the jagged stab wound began closing, but too slow for my liking.

I whirled around, lashing at demons in the physical realm with claws, fire, and orbs of shadow that held a deadly 'rope' between them. I pulled them into the twilight realm, where I massacred them in seconds, and ignored the throbbing pain in my broken left foreleg. I knew that if I could just pull Mal'ganis into the twilight realm, it would be over. I could deal with him there one on one, and then close the portals. Problem was, the dreadlord's will was much too strong to pull forcefully. I was playing his game.

But it wasn't a total loss. For every hit his demons scored, I scored a half-dozen more. As injured as I was, so was Mal'ganis. Shadows flickered around the cuts, burns, and jagged stabs I'd inflicted on him, his physical form threatening to dissolve.

I raised my wings and flapped them down hard, the buffet of wind clearing the demons away from me and giving me the opening I needed to pounce at Mal'ganis. But instead of doing that, I sunk fully into the twilight realm, moved over to where the dreadlord was in the physical realm, and re-emerged, lowering my head to him and flashing out my tusks, stabbing the dreadlord in the side. My tusks dented his plate armor, and pierced flesh as I withdrew. I went to bite him, but he was already gone, trapping me between the buildings and his army, hurling more green fire at me, only for it to be absorbed by my twilight barrier.

But I was so tired. I'd been at this for what seemed like hours. Dodge, swipe, bite, tail, fireball, breath, spell, repeat. I couldn't fly, Mal'ganis's ability to summon infernals made certain of that. So I'd been forced to abandon my greatest advantage on him, and fight on the ground, playing by _his_ rules.

You don't want to play by a dreadlord's rules.

I took a deep breath and exhaled the fireball in my crop, breathing out as it entered my mouth to engulf a massive area in thick rivulets of twilight fire, scorching the air and sterilizing the earth. Mal'ganis cocooned himself with his wings to protect himself, which gave me the perfect opportunity to cast one of my more potent spells.

Purple light engulfed the green-winged dreadlord, making him stop to look at himself. When he saw it wasn't doing anything, he went back to flinging spells at me, wisely avoiding entering into a melee with me, however hard I tried to do so. A few seconds later, though, he realized his mistake when a colossal shadow nova exploded around him, the force sending him flying backwards and hitting a rock outcropping with a _thud._ He shakily got to his feet, minions intercepting the blasts I flung at him even as I clawed apart felhounds and terrorfiends alike. I couldn't keep this up forever. I had to do something, but what? I couldn't focus only on Mal'ganis...

Well, why couldn't I? It was one of the dragonspawn general Vajarn's more favored tactics, the 'All In' stratagem. With a huff, I shifted to my mortal form to give the demons a smaller target, as well as increase the amount of mana I could draw on. I refreshed my twilight barrier, and dashed at Mal'ganis.

A green wave of shadowy insects flew over my barrier and sent me skidding back into the middle of the demons, which I quickly dispatched with an eruption of my Flight's signature energy. Alright, so that wouldn't work. But no reason why I couldn't go at him with my true form. I shifted back, and pounced at him, pinning the dreadlord with a broken paw, which flared in pain that I ignored. I grinned in delight before cracking open my maw and breathing a steady stream of twilight fire at him. I saw the flames pass around Mal'ganis as he desperately wove protective magic around himself. I took the paw that wasn't busy pinning him and swiped it across him, then again, clawing and blasting him.

Sadly, before I could land the final blow, a sword entered my tail's length. I roared in pain and got off of the dreadlord, whipping my tail around to dislodge the shivara that had attacked me so. A burning pain slowly began to spread out from the stab wound.

Poison.

I drew the mists of the twilight realm around me like a cloak, letting the restoring twilight heal me and diminish injuries I'd take. But it did little to slow down the poison, which had reached the base of my tail, where it connected with my body. I staggered back, a fresh twilight barrier around me, and released a nova of twilight energy to kill the demons around me. Mal'ganis stood calmly, ignoring the various wounds criss-crossing his body, the rips in his plate armor. A veritable army of demons came from the portal and surrounded him, hissing and growling at me, waiting for his command.

I was poisoned. I had limited time. I reached my magic into the demonic portal and attempted to close it, but met resistance. So, it was being kept open from the _other_ side then. Wonderful. Just wonderful.

I sunk further into the twilight realm, drew upon energy from there, and shifted further back into the physical realm with bolts of twilight lightning arcing between my horns, tusks, and wingtips. I let loose the arcs upon the demon army in a barrage, battering them and sending them back to the Nether, all except Mal'ganis, who deftly dodged in between each of my strikes with agility no being of his size should possess. More demons came out, and I moaned in despair. This was going nowhere fast.

At that moment, two arcane portals opened next to me. I jumped away from them, thinking they were more of the Burning Legion's tricks. Looking closer at them, I saw that they connected to a high-up place in a sunny valley. Thunder Bluff.

The Kingslayers charged out, screaming fire and fury upon the demons, forcing them back before regrouping around me. Of course. Orgrimmar would send somebody to get their help.

I looked at Mal'ganis, who looked startled inspite of the Burning Legion continuing to pool around him. He screamed, shadows pooling around his hands, and opened two more portals, adding to the stream of demons coming from the first. "KILL THEM!"

"Alright," I whispered hoarsely to the mortal heroes. "You're here, _help _me, damn it!"

Thankfully, soothing waves of nature magic surged through me, pushing the demonic poison, now up to my wings, from my system and healing my less serious wounds as the Kingslayers engaged Mal'ganis and his hoard demons. The dreadlord took a step back to their guild hall, when the same felguard from before came out, holding an artifact. It was a curious little thing; it could fit into the palm of a human's hand, and consisted of a bright purple crystal surrounded by similarly colored metal beams, forming a three-fingered claw holding the crystal in place. Arcane energy rippled over it. It looked like draenic technology.

The felguard took one look at Mal'ganis, who looked back down at the felguard, and nodded.

Turaniles, the night elven leader of the Kingslayers, shouted as the demon headed for the closest portal. "KILL THAT FELGUARD!"

A volley of spells, thrown weapons, and arrows descended upon the felguard, but an emerging shivara twirled her six swords with expert skill and deflected the attacks. The felguard closed in the distance rapidly, so I pounced at it, placing myself between it and the portal, snapping my jaws at it. It jerked back, and Mal'ganis took my moment of attack to nail me with a felflame bolt in the mouth. I stumbled back, coughing as the flame burned inside my mouth. I looked back at the felguard. Time seemed to slow down as it closed in on the portal, a hail of attacks descending on it. The demon fell to its knees as an arrow penetrated its throat, and began dissolving from the waist into black mist.

Then, with the last of its strength, it hurled the violet artifact into the demonic portal, which closed around it with a _pop._

"No!" Mal'ganis didn't last long after Turaniles's scream. He made a break for the nearest demonic portal, grinning with smugness. But he was already weakened by his fight with me. The Liberality Confederacy cut him down before he could escape, making him evaporate into a swarm of bats, leaving his battered plate armor behind, now hollow. Knowing the dreadlord, he'd just regenerate. The other two portals collapsed, and with them, so did I. I laid on my stomach, panting heavily as Turaniles walked around to infront of me.

"Selriona the Twilight. We meet again."

"Yeah," I said between pants. "Fancy seeing you here."

"It would appear we got here too late. Rest if you feel you need it. Shivara poison is nothing to be joked around with." She turned her voice to her guildmates. "Alright! Orgrimmar's still under attack. Let's show these cultists what we're made of!" she shouted, raising her electric sword to the air. A cheer resounded from the other Kingslayers, and they ran off to help defeat the remaining elementals. Fires still burned around the Valley of Honor, but they were being put out. It suddenly occurred to me that maybe I should enter my mortal form, lest a mortal stumble on me and think I'm not on their side. With that thought, I shimmered and fell into the form of a blood elf, and laid on the ground, letting my energy return. I sunk into the twilight realm, and sighed when I felt the familiar mist caressing and rippling around me.

_'Selriona? Where are you?' _Came Amanthe's voice in my head, with a note of worry in it.

_'The twilight realm, why?'_

_'Are you okay? Where's Mal'ganis? Layalith?'  
><em>

I briefly rose into the physical realm to look over at Layalith. She was still out cold from being hit with a carrion swarm point blank, and several shadow burns covered her, looking like a swarm of mosquitoes had been let loose on her, but from what I knew of mortal injuries, she'd live. Still, I wove a shadow mend on her just in case. I sunk back into the twilight realm. _'Layalith's unconscious. I'm o__kay, just a bit battered. Mal'ganis is dead for now, but it looks like he got what he wanted.'_

_'Shit! At least you're okay. I'm on my way with Seer Liwatha. Should I look for you?'  
><em>

_'No, I'm going to stay in the twilight realm a little. The Kingslayers arrived, and if they could kill _Illidan _I'm sure they can handle this. How're you doing?'_

_'Like the darkest of hells. You know Saltio? The tauren? Well, she bonded with a fire elemental and nearly killed me.'  
><em>

Worry knotted in my heart. _'Are you - '_

_'I'm fine, thanks to Seer Liwatha. We're arriving in the Valley of Honor just now.'  
><em>

_'Can you fight?'  
><em>

_'I can still fight, but not as well.'  
><em>

_'Okay. Help the Kingslayers, they can keep you safe. I'll meet up with you outside Orgrimmar's gates. I'll get Layalith to safety too. We'll be in the twilight realm.'  
><em>

_'Got it.' _The slight tension above my ears ceased, and I sat up. I rose out of the twilight realm to grab Layalith, and pulled her back in with me. I stood, legs wobbling from the injuries I'd received, but otherwise rapidly rejuvenating. I hoisted her up and draped her over my shoulder, and began to run out of Orgrimmar, dodging the occasional fire. The Drag was not being completely destroyed, so I assumed it was at least under control, and the Valley of Strength seemed to have been completely retaken. I exited Orgrimmar and walked to the spot where I'd placed Ialion to make sure he'd be safe. He was currently sleeping, curled in a ball floating in midair as a dark blue ball hovered around him, keeping him shielded. I waved the hand not holding Layalith over the shell, and it rippled and faded. He slowly descended to the earth, still snoozing.

I smiled fondly at him, and then put Layalith down on her back. For a while I just sat there, getting my breath back, weaving shadow mends onto my injuries, specifically my broken arm. I frowned as the heals diminished in potency. I'd need to put that in a cast.

After a few minutes, Orgrimmar pumping out ever-smaller quantities of purple smoke into the cloud-covered sky, Layalith stirred. She groaned once, then shot straight up. "Mal! Gan... is?"

"He's dead, for the time being."

"Where are we?" She glanced over to Ialion, then back at me. "What happened?"

"Mal'ganis knocked you out with his spell. Good thing the Liberality Confederacy showed up when they did, or we might not have gotten away."

"I thought you said you could _handle_ Mal'ganis?"

I snorted. "I _can_ handle Mal'ganis, but I can't handle Mal'ganis together with a demon army."

The mortal frowned. "Alright, now where are we?"

"The twilight realm. I brought you here with me. Now, if you don't mind, I've been poisoned recently, and I am going to sleep. The Kingslayers have the invasion covered." I groaned, and began to shift to my true form. Layalith staggered away as I grew, but then sat back down. I curled my forelegs under me, and rested my head on the ground. Turaniles was right. Shivara poison was nasty stuff. I felt its effects in my bones when I moved them, my joints creaking angrily at me, but they'd already expelled the toxin from me. I didn't want to think about what would've happened if they didn't heal me.

I sighed, and closed my eyes, sleep overtaking me within moments.

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><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<strong>


	10. Chapter 10:Elemental Aftermath

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.  
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**Massive, massive thanks to my wonderful beta, Dusty the Umbravita, without whom I never would have gotten this far in the story. A tip of the hat to her, and I wish her the best of luck in her future endeavors.  
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**Chapter published 5/17/12  
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><p><span>Amanthe<span>

I stood in the middle of the Valley of Strength, taking in the devastation. All things considered, it wasn't too bad. Sure, large chunks of the Skyway had collapsed into the streets. Houses were lopsided and water-damaged. People who'd lost their homes stood in the streets, looking at the damage done, while the people who'd lost their lives were given burials in the cemeteries, but all in all, it could've been much worse.

I rubbed my hands over the raw flesh of my arms, singed from my battle with Saltio even after being healed, then regretted it instantly as pain flared along it.. I was lucky not to be more seriously burned; her fireballs were more concussive than fiery. I didn't know why that was. Maybe she still had some bit of reason in her that didn't want to kill me? Or maybe she wasn't used to her new powers.

I sighed, and headed off towards the Drag. It'd been just one day since the invasion of Orgrimmar. Today was the day the guard was supposed to attack the cultists. Mal'ganis had gotten what he wanted. The Legion had gotten what they wanted. But that begged the question, what was it that they wanted? Selriona told me they'd stolen an artifact from the Liberality Confederacy, and when I asked Turaniles, she said it was the last relic of Argus, but said nothing when I asked her of its function. I turned a corner, nearly smashed into an orc, and tucked my hands into my pockets, feeling the smooth metal of the Orb of Deception there.

It didn't take me long to reach Seer Liwatha's clinic, pushing aside the curtain to enter. The clinic was filled to capacity, with several members of the Horde on the beds. A few of them moaned. A few of them were awake. Most were asleep. I spotted Seer Liwatha further back, and a Forsaken man helping heal some of the patients. My eyes briefly locked with his eerie yellow ones, but then I forced my gaze to avert I stepped through the clinic, approaching one of the beds. In it, Layalith sat, her armor taken off to reveal her civilian clothing. I walked up to her, and crossed my arms.

"Looking good, Layalith," I said with a smirk.

She scowled at me, then winced. Her skin was red, like a lobster, covered in tiny bite marks here and there. The damage the carrion swarm had done to her was largely superficial; she'd been hurt more from the concussion after the spell had tossed her back. But wasn't she a _sight._

"Shut it, Amanthe. Did you come here just to taunt me about how I stupidly ran headfirst into an attack?"

"Oh, definitely." My smirk widened. "Unless you feel like talking about what happened while I was asleep? I kinda have some catching up to do."

"Why don't you simply ask _her?_" I knew who she meant, of course. Selriona.

"I feel like annoying you. Think of it as revenge for how you acted in the camp of the you-know-what."

She growled. "Alright, fine. After I left, I made a run for the Kor'kron and told them about what was going to happen." Her eyes flickered around to the others to see if they listened to us. Satisfied, she continued. "They kept me there for a while to make sure I wasn't withholding information, which I wasn't, save for you and your little friends. While they were, I told them I had someone who needed help, but they were more concerned with keeping Orgrimmar from being _burned to the ground. _So I came back and ran into your patron on the way, who'd just picked up her whelp and phased it into the twilight realm. We both came to you, and you know the rest."

I nodded. "Why didn't you tell them about, you know? Her and I?"

"Because _I_ still don't know what to think about it. I'll need a few days at least to figure out how I feel about what you've told me. Now, are you going to let me rest?"

I smiled, and gently cast a renew onto her. Not that it would do much anymore, with her resistance to magic temporarily heightened. "Sure. After all, there's someone I need to visit, make sure he's alright. I'll be back."

I turned around, and walked out of the infirmary. Liwatha wouldn't hold it against me if I left to check if someone else wasn't hurt. I rubbed my own red skin, wondering at the miracle of having escaped with such weak burns, even if I had been magically healed and been healing naturally for a day now. I passed through the Drag, marveling at the destruction that had been wrought on it. For a moment my eyes locked on a ring of ash, with streaks of black criss-crossing the area around it where Saltio had dashed back and forth.

I shook my head, and continued to the Valley of Wisdom. I still couldn't get my head around the devastation that had been wrought here. The air elementals had tossed the infrastructure around like nothing, ripped houses apart and then hurled the debris with their arms. Some shopping carts were still overturned, lines of homes just _gone_, the whole place just completely and utterly _wrecked. _I stumbled my way towards my home, and idly peered in to see what the damage was. The whole of the wall holding the cupboards and the like had collapsed into the inn next door, planks of wood and piles of stone sticking out of each other. Over in the corner, the waste bin I'd tossed the cult's puzzle box into sat on its side, the sinister artifact spilled out of it onto the floor. I sighed, and shook my head. I walked in and gingerly picked up the box, placing it out of sight again.

"Wonderful," I said, leaving the place, wondering when I'd started considering it a home and not a house. I walked a few places next door, and looked inside, the door practically being ripped off its hinges. Inside the home was a little darker than outside, light from outside not fully penetrating into the house. I knocked on what was left of the door. "Breorn?" I asked him, seeing his form in a chair slumped over the table.

"Yeah?"

"Can I come in?"

"Sure," came his curt response. I entered. "So, what happened to her?"

I knew right off who he meant. "I was heading over to the Valley of Honor when a collapse of debris sealed off the passage. Saltio... she tried to kill me with a fireball."

He looked up, his eyes bloodshot. "She's never had magical power. What changed?"

I licked my lips. "She's... I don't know exactly what happened. She's bonded with a fire elemental. She escaped, too."

He groaned and beat his head against the table. "How could she? She was my mate, my wife. She'd never do anything like this. She would've told me. This was my fault. I should've seen the signs earlier. Damn it."

"Breorn, it's not your fault. If anything, it's my fault for not saying anything sooner. I just - I thought I could save her on my own."

"I know. You tried. Don't beat yourself up over it. Well, now what? What happened?"

"Nil Sag'ma is worse than we thought. He's a dreadlord, and not just any dreadlord. Nil Sag'ma is an anagram for Mal'ganis."

He groaned again. "Damn, damn, damn. Did he at least die? Even if he'll just come back?"

"He died, yeah, but he got what he wanted. The invasion was a distraction for him to get some artifact, and it worked. What now?"

"The Warchief is having the city rebuilt, and we've already destroyed the cultist camp. Damn it, I thought you said they were going tomorrow!"

"I thought so too! But it gets worse. Apparently Malg was _also_ Mal'ganis." He moaned again. "He told me himself before putting me to sleep. Good thing he didn't kill me; demons are just so _arrogant._" I sat down across from Breorn. "How're you holding up? I mean, besides the obvious."

Breorn sighed, but didn't raise his head. "I'll live. Life goes on. What about you?"

I shrugged. "I'll get on. I still live here, even if my house practically lost a wall. Hey, don't worry, alright? Things will get better."

He nodded, moving his head along the table. "Yeah. Can you leave, for now? I... I need to be alone."

I smiled emptily. "Yeah, sure." I got up, and headed for what remained of the door. I stepped over it, and out into the streets of Orgrimmar. I was on my way back to my home, or what was left of it, when I felt a familiar pressure above my ears.

_'Hey, Amanthe, can you come to the entrance of Orgrimmar? Verthelion and I need to talk with you. It's about - "_

_"Don't tell me, Mal'ganis?"  
><em>

_"... well, yeah. Can you come, please? It's kinda important."  
><em>

_"I'm on my way." _The link's tension faded into nothingness, and I turned around to head for the gates. Verthelion? This would be interesting. I'd never met the Aspect of the Twilight Flight before, but I'd heard about him, of course. This would be interesting. I continued to look around in marvel at the destruction wrought.

This was my fault.

If I'd acted sooner, if I'd told the guard sooner, then...

Then what? Mal'ganis still had control of the guard. He'd just keep them in place. And Layalith had told them _months_ before I did.

If I'd told the Kor'kron -

- please. I wouldn't get close to them. The Kor'kron resided in Grommash Hold, where there were bound to be magical wards left and right. My illusion would be outed in a heartbeat.

But if I just connected the dots sooner with Mal'ganis...

... then maybe I could have done something, but the fact remained that I _hadn't_ connected the dots. How would I have anticipated something like an anagram? And furthermore, what difference would it have made? The Legion is invading, the Twilight's Hammer is invading, so? Same response by the guard; defend. Same response by Mal'ganis; invade.

With an exasperated growl, I decided not to linger on it. The invasion happened, the Legion got what they wanted, and nothing would change that. I came up to the gates out of Orgrimmar, where the guards gave me some suspicion, which I managed to deflect with a deftly woven mind soothe, however awful I felt about it. They had every right to be suspicious of me, with the invasion only yesterday. One of them resisted the mind soothe; I cast another one, and that was that.

Once I was out of eyeshot of the guards, I felt a ripple pass through the air. Something grabbed my left hand, and all at once the world became a swirl of black. A moment later, it faded, and I was back in the twilight realm.

I blinked once, and took in my surroundings. Selriona stepped back from me, her left arm in a white sling with a faint dark blue tint. Off to the side, Ialion sat on his haunches, looking up at us. Next to Selriona stood what appeared to be a human man, but I knew better than that. He shared the same violet/dark blue eyes that Selriona did, in addition to the black hair with a violet sheen. Like Selriona, he had pale skin, as well as a narrow chin and unusually dark shadows under his eyes. He had a little scar on the side of his neck, and wore dark blue robes. The haze of the twilight realm seemed to cling to him, the air shimmering around his form like a mirage. Tiny flickers of twilight lightning arced between his fingers, his hair, across his skin. Right away I knew who this was.

I curtseyed. "Verthelion, the Aspect."

He shuffled nervously. "Titans, I am _never_ going to get used to that."

"So, why do you need to talk to me about Mal'ganis?"

"Well," said the Aspect. "We could use your help in figuring out what he wanted with the artifact."

"And why would you need my help?"

Selriona chuckled. "Well, you're twice as old as both of us put together. So, you have a lot more life experience than us."

I pressed my lips together. "Hmm, I could argue that, but, let's not. So, what does this relic _do_ anyway?"

"I asked Turaniles," she said. "It's the last relic from Argus that the draenei took with them." I _knew_ that, I thought with a minor twinge of annoyance. "Apparently it teleports the user to random places on the world it's on. Random, as in you have as much chance to wind up in the middle of the Barrens as on the bottom of the sea. They don't use it because of that."

"Wow. And Mal'ganis took _that?_"

Verthelion nodded. So far he acted the way I'd expected him to from what Selriona had told me of him. "We're trying to find out what use the Legion could have for something like that. Any ideas?"

"Well, what've you got so far?" I asked.

Selriona answered. "Well, we know they can't be using it to open a portal. I mean, they'd get their own armies killed, and there are more reliable ways, _m__uch_ more reliable ways, to open portals."

"Maybe they could use it as a weapon? As in, force the device to teleport their enemies randomly?"

The Aspect of Twilight nodded. "Well, that certainly sounds like something they'd do. But why not just make a weapon to simply kill their foes?"

I shrugged, then said, "It's always a good thing to have options available to you. But you know what rubs me the wrong way about this? How they went about getting the artifact."

My friend nodded, placing a hand on her chin. "Yeah, it does seem strange now that you mention it. Why use the cult? Why not just invade yourselves to get it? Who cares if there's a distraction by the Twilight's Hammer or the Burning Legion if you get the artifact in the end?"

"They're being subtle about it," I said. "It's not like them to be subtle. Whatever they've got planned, they don't want Azeroth knowing they're up to something."

"You're right. The Legion's trying to keep this plan hidden from us, even more than they usually do. They've never bothered with subtlety before; they just open up portals and start killing everyone. What's different now?" asked Verthelion.

His mate shrugged. "I don't know. They got the artifact they wanted, that's a problem. We can't do anything about it now short of invading their base world _Argus_, yeah, right. So what is it they're planning to do?"

I groaned and rubbed my temples. "Hells if I know. But if they want to be this subtle, that people blame another faction, then they're going to mix in their true plan with their standard run of the mill 'screwing with Azeroth'."

Verthelion sighed. "You're right. They're going to try to throw us off the scent of what they want to accomplish. Which is why we need to keep a lookout for _everything_ that they do. Even the slightest bit of Legion activity, we have to treat as an emergency, since we won't know what is part of their plan. Hopefully, over time we'll be able to connect the dots."

"Right. Amanthe, I need you to stay in Orgrimmar. The Legion may try for here again, and Mal'ganis knows that we figured out his plan to use the cult. He might think that we're leaving Orgrimmar, thinking he'll try for somewhere else. We need to cover all our bases."

I nodded. "Right, got it."

Ialion fluttered up to his mother, who looked down at him. "Ialion, don't think you're off the hook. You still left Amanthe's house, when I'd specifically told you _not _to!" He looked down, and whined. "Okay, look. You can either stay here with Amanthe, or you can come back with me to Grim Bat - "

He threw himself at her, wrapping his wings around her neck. "Iwannagohome! Orgrimmar's scary! There's too many dreadlords here!"

She nodded. "Alright, I thought so. Here, I'll open a portal. Go through it. Verthelion?" Arcane energy began lighting up her hands, and she closed her eyes, focusing hard.

"Right. We need to keep a sharp eye on the Legion, especially. They've got a new plan of attack, instead of just jabbing at Azeroth whenever they can. This is undoubtedly building up to something like the War of the Ancients. Maybe worse, maybe better. But we need to be ready for it when it comes. Amanthe, keep watch on Orgrimmar. I'm going to go talk to the rest of our Flight. We _will_ be ready." Having said that, the Aspect of the Twilight Flight exploded into a cluster of indigo embers, which faded within seconds. At the same time that happened, Selriona finished casting her portal. I saw her chamber on the other side of it, some of her brood fluttering around inside of it.

Ialion flew over to me and pressed his head into my stomach. "Bye Amanthe! Come visit!" Before I could respond, he dove into the portal.

Selriona and I looked at each other, before she spoke. "Amanthe, there's something I feel you should know," she said, the hints of a frown on her mouth. Her voice adopted the same tone she had whenever I asked her why I needed to learn Draconic, or how to use twilight magic. "You know how I don't age, and well, you do?"

I cringed. Of course I knew it, and kept the thought in the back of my head where it belonged. I would die long before Selriona did. I would get old and die, while she wouldn't. It wasn't exactly a comforting thought. "Of course I do, how could I not?"

"Well, I've been working on a spell. During the Cataclysm, the Twilight's Hammer placed magic on the eggs of other Flights they abducted, keeping them from hatching until they wanted them to do so. I've dispelled all of _that,_ but I've been tweaking with it in my mind. I'm coming up with a spell that would let one stop their aging."

"Wait, are you saying what I think you're saying?"

She nodded, but her tone stayed miserable. "Yeah. If all goes well, I should have a spell in a few months to let you freeze your aging for a year. And then you can just use it again. You'd stop aging entirely." She muttered under her breath, "Guess I'm how she finds it," but I wasn't focusing on that.

My throat knotted. Live _forever? _People always said things in novels about how it wasn't a good thing to live forever, because you apparently become a lonely old hermit with no friends, but that wouldn't be my case, not with a _dragon_ as my best friend. Living forever...

"I - I - wow. Thanks, really. I don't really know how to make that up to you..."

She shook her head a little _too_ forcefully. "No, no, don't worry about it. It's fine. So, need any help with Orgrimmar?"

"Well, my home's a bit on the collapsed side, but it's nothing too bad." _Live forever..._ I repeated in my mind, still dumbstruck by the concept. "I'll be fine."

"Alright. See you around, Amanthe. Watch out for the demons. They might just take up your idea of weaponizing the relic."

"Yeah, but I can't help but feel like there's something more to it, like the relic's just a key to something."

She shrugged. "Maybe. We'll find out eventually though, one way or another. The Legion's going to try and take Azeroth again. It's just a matter of time."

"Yeah," I murmured as she walked back into the portal, it vanishing and leaving me alone in the twilight realm.

"Only a matter of time," I said, preparing to open a portal back into the physical realm to go back to the clinic.

* * *

><p><strong>And that is the end of Section 1. After this, I plan to do a<strong> **major time-skip, as I mentioned at the beginning of the story, which separates all the sections. The jump in question here is 55 years. It seems like a lot, and it is, but this story pans out over a very long time. Characters from the first section will be repeated in the latter ones, though. So it's not a complete pressing of the Reset button each time a section ends. There's an overarcing plot which_ will_ become clear in time, don't worry.  
><strong>

**Review, let me know what you think.  
><strong>


	11. Chapter 11:Thieving Apprentice

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Thanks to my beta, dharak.  
><strong>

**Chapter published 5/23/12  
><strong>

* * *

><p><strong>Section 2:Lamented Farewell<strong>

Fifty-five years, two hundred and forty-two days, fourteen hours, fifty-three minutes, and twenty-nine seconds after the Epilogue of Coup de What?

Amanthe

I stood in a small wooden cottage. A candle flickered in its pool of wax over on a table, illuminating multiple open books written in a language I didn't understand, letters that writhed on the page and made my head hurt. The little table was all there was inside beyond me, for there wasn't room for anything else. I ran my head along the wooden door, surprised to find it felt like metal. Then I walked over to the small window and looked out.

Outside was night, with a heavy, impenetrable wall of trees surrounding my house outside a small, circular clearing. No stars shone, but there were no clouds, either. I narrowed my eyes, and saw something moving in the wall of trees. A pitch black goat, as tall as I, came out.

_Maaaaaa._

Even though it was outside, and quite far away, I heard it as clearly as if it were right next to me. Its horns were a dark purple, but the worst part was the eyes. Instead of having two eyes, it had _seven;_ one in the middle of its forehead and three on either side, forming a crown of eyes. The eye second from its left was open. The three eyes on the right were all glassy and unfocused. The others were closed.

_Maaaaaa._

I stared at the one open eye, trying to keep myself from looking at the horrible, dead eyes, focusing instead on the red iris of the opened eye. The goat stared back at me, and bent down to eat a chunk of grass out of the earth, all the while staying focused on me. I tore my gaze away from it, and looked back at the candle.

In place of the candle was the same seven-eyed goat, the desk gone. It looked at me, darkness seeping from its open eye, changing the scene around me.

_Maaaaaa._

I found myself in an endless, rocky plain. Dark mist covered the world around me, obscuring a star-filled sky. The darkness pulsed around me, trying in vain to suffocate me. Faces formed in the mist and vanished just as fast as they appeared; a gnome man, an orc woman, a bronze drake, a naga, a doomguard. I shivered and walked forward, the fog parting before me, wispy beings bowing as they made way for me. An eerie, haunting tune echoed through the air, like the tune at a funeral. I swiped my hands through the mist, clearing it away from me briefly, only for the darkness to surge back in twice as thick. Soon I was frantically swatting away the blackness, only for it to surround me and obscure all sight, leaving me floating inside of a pitch black void.

I swiveled around, weightless, in the vast emptiness-looking for anything to use as a reference point, anything at all. Faint whispers surrounded me on all sides, hushing each other, inciting each other, but when I tried to listen to them, they grew quieter so I couldn't make them out. All at once, a massive maw full of teeth, a mouth with no face, appeared out of the void, and slammed down on my body, fangs the size of my arms stabbing into me. I screamed, and thrashed meekly against the crushing bite as purple fluid seeped out of it, onto my body, hissing like acid -

* * *

><p>"AAH!" I bolted straight up, a cold sweat clinging to my body. My hands went to my waist, certain there were enormous teeth going through where my stomach was. I gasped like a fish out of water, trying to get my heartbeat to slow down.<p>

_'What happened?' _came Selriona's voice in my mind, worried and panicked.

_'Nothing, nothing. Just a nightmare. I'm fine. Damn it, I've got to stop using the link whenever I have a bad dream.'_

_'Alright. You sure you're fine?'_

_'Yeah, I'm good. My heart feels like it's about to jump out of my chest, but otherwise I'm fine.'_

_'If you say so,' _she said, albeit with a heavy note of suspicion in her voice. The pressure of the link faded into nothing, and I got out of my bed, looking around at the home I occupied. Blue, purple and silver patterns wove their way across the marble, making eyes in several places, the symbols of the Kirin Tor. Several desks and shelves contained my belongings, including a chest of clothes, a dozen or so books on topics ranging from fantasy to history. I got off my bed, pulling the covers off of me, and stretched, heart still thumping in my chest. A voice I hadn't heard, or allowed myself to hear for a long time echoed in my head My memory called up a rather fitting saying I'd heard.

_Did you have that dream again? The black goat with seven eyes that watches from the outside._

I walked out of my bedroom, and eyed the chest that held the Twilight Hammer's puzzle box, locked down tight with locks and magical wards. It only spoke to me whenever I tried to solve it, which I hadn't done for the past fifty years. But I hadn't been able to leave it behind, either. Nobody knew about it, and nobody ever would if I could help it. Still, sometimes my mind dredged up things it had said, things long forgotten, and wove them into a dream.

I shook my head, clearing my mind of such thoughts. I needed breakfast; I had a long shift at Eonar's Greenhouse ahead of me. I walked over to a table and knelt down, opening shelves knee-high, taking out magically chilled fruits and meats, as well as water. Within a few minutes, I'd finished breakfast, and changed out of my dark blue nightgown into the standard purple and silver attire worn by the inhabitants of the floating city. I stretched my arms and legs, then walked outside.

The chill of Northrend rarely ever blew into Dalaran, but today was one of the days it did, heavy clouds from Icecrown trying to drift downwards to me. I shivered and hugged my arms around my body, passing through the packed streets, occasionally shoving past someone, drawing a slight glare from them. Here and there a tree stood in a small field of grass, the golden rays of morning sun being scattered by the dew, forming tiny gem stones in my sight. Finding the Magus Commerce Exchange was simple, and finding Eonar's Greenhouse was even simpler. I entered the glass dome of the building, a swell of heat washing over me. I took a few moments to marvel at the various plants growing within the glass building; everything from Peacebloom to Stormvine and everything in between. I looked at an Earthroot, the brown plant with darker knobs and thorns looking out of place among the brightly colored flowers.

The darker knobs, fueled by my imagination, looked all too similar to goat eyes.

I shook myself from my marveling and continued to walk, inside a smaller, sub-building enclosed from the outside. Shelves filled with various herbalism instruments, such as pouches designed to keep plants from being crushed, or crystalline vials to hold frailer plants, lined the walls behind a desk, one which I moved behind with a single, relaxed movement. I spotted Jonathan Egan out of the corner of my eye, the current owner of the shop after his parents had retired, coming up from a spiral staircase that led down, so far down it nearly breached the Underbelly.

He turned to me. "Right on time, Elizabeth."

I nodded at the mention of my pseudonym. The way I saw it, Amanthe Sivering was still alive, if over eighty years old, and it wouldn't do for someone to look into a book of records and find that I didn't exactly look my age. Therefor, Elizabeth Brown was born. I still kept my original form, though, since nobody would think to look for an eighty-year old human amongst one that looks to be thirty.

"When have I ever been late? Think we'll have a lot of customers today?"

He shrugged, leaning against a wall. "More than normal. Pilgrim's Bounty is getting closer, and people are going to want to buy herbs for seasoning, and we sell them cheaper than the packets you can get with all sorts of herbs in them. And from there, it's just going to get more and more hectic."

"Hmm, figured as much."

"Well, if you've got this post covered, I'm going outside for those looking for a plant in particular."

I nodded to him . "Right."

Without another word, he walked out, and took his post in the greenhouse itself. Before too long, we had our first customer, a dwarf. He spoke with Jonathan briefly, me unable to make out what was being said, before Jonathan developed a puzzled look, then shrugged, and referred him inside to me with a wave of his hand.

"Hi," I greeted him. "What can I do for you?"

"I'm looking for something I could add to a drink to knock someone's socks off! Something spicy."

I gave him a slightly wayward look. "Um... okay. I think I have just the thing." I got out from behind the desk. "One moment, please." I walked down the steps and soon found myself in a musky storage room. Preserved plants were held in jars, sparkling with arcane energies that held them in stasis. I moved along, brushing the occasional cobweb away. I wrinkled my nose. Cobwebs? This place wasn't underused enough for there to be _cobwebs. _A byproduct of all the arcane magic, no doubt.

"A, B, C, D, E, F. Fade, Flame, back, Fire... ah!" I grabbed the jar in question and walked back up to the dwarf, who was busy tapping his foot. "Alright," I said, taking a small red leaf out of the vial, the leaf smoldering and smoking lightly even as I held it. "A Fire Leaf. That'll be seven silver and fifty copper."

He nodded, and fished out the money. He gave me the coins, and I gave him the herb. "Thanks. Pleasure doing business with you."

I smiled warmly, placing the coins in a special drawer behind the desk. "The feeling's mutual. Take care."

"Aye, I will." With that, the customer left, whistling a jaunty tune.

The day wore on, people coming in and leaving in a steady trickle. Most of them, Jonathan could handle on his own, but several of them came in to me, when he couldn't find what they needed among the fresher plants. Over time, Jonathan slowly fell back, until by noon he was in the same building with me. A woman came in, looking extremely similar to Jonathan, by virtue of the same brown hair and eyes, and sunken cheeks.

"Hey there, cous," she said.

Jonathan sighed. "Hello, Monika. What's going on? Need something for the alchemy store?"

"As a matter of fact, yeah. My boss sent me over here for a crystalline vial, size five, thickness eight." The moment that was said, I began inspecting the shelves, searching for the type of vial she had identified. When I couldn't find one, I turned around and frowned.

"Hey, I can't find one here."

Jonathan frowned. "Guess we ran out. Can you go down to...?"

I knew what he meant, and smiled, grabbing a few coins out of the desk for the payment I'd need. "Of course. Think you can hold the place until then?"

He scoffed. "Elizabeth, I've been in the herbalist business since I was _ten._ Somehow, I think I'll manage."

I nodded, and headed out of the Magus Commerce Exchange. I turned around, and headed towards the Silver Enclave. Once the sparkling towers were in sight, I veered to the right and entered a small shop just outside of it, All Things Practical. I ducked inside the reagent store, and headed towards the person behind the desk, and infront of the various shelves holding all manner of things.

He too wore the violet and yellow robes that were predominant in Dalaran, however the yellow portions were faded, and the purple was a brilliant violet, nearly indigo. He had pale skin and black hair, though when light reflected off it, it had an indigo color. His normally poisonous green eyes were turned a dark blue, and he had unusually dark shadows under his eyes.

"Hello there, Ian," I greeted him.

'Ian' just nodded back to me. "Pleased to meetyt - argh. Pleased to meet you too, _Elizabeth_," Ialion greeted me, with a slight stutter in his voice.

"You're getting sick again, aren't you?"

He rolled his eyes. "I can manage it just fine. So, what brings you here?"

"I need a crystalline vial, size five, thickness eight."

He spun around with a slight bounce in his movements, the tell-tale sign of being ground-sick. He moved along the shelves, tracing them with a finger, before grabbing a glass tube and giving it to me. "All right, that's ten copper."

I nodded, gave him the ten pieces of metal, and he in turn gave me the vial. "So Ian, find anything arcane yet?" He knew what I meant by arcane. Arcane corruption, which was why I was here in the first place, and why the Twilight drake had chosen to tag along.

He shook his head. "No, nothing. But I have heard of the Ice King's apprentice going awry."

I raised an eyebrow. "Oh? Do tell."

"Well, he's apparently stolen a holy relic from Dalaran, and is in hiding. That might be worth checking out later."

I nodded to him. "Yeah. Shame for the Ice King, though. Think maybe we should ask him about this? From what I hear about him, he's easily approachable."

Ialion leaned back, considering this for a moment. "Yeah, we should. But not now, okay? Later, when we're not busy. I'll meet you at the statue in Runeweaver Square."

"Got it. See you then," I said, leaving him behind as I returned to Eonar's Greenhouse. Jonathan just finished sending away a rather pleased looking blood elf with a frost lotus in her grasp. I walked in and found Monika Egan still waiting in the same spot she'd been before. Like a statue.

"Alright, here's the vial you asked for. That'll cost you fifteen copper." She nodded, and we wordlessly exchanged the materials.

She patted Jonathan on the back. "See you around, cous. I gotta get back for now, though."

He sighed, and just put his head in his left hand. "Yes, yes. Goodbye, Monika." She flitted out of the shop. I took my post back behind the desk, and the day wore on just like always. Within a few hours, my shift finally ended, and Jonathan closed the greenhouse. I left after receiving my pay, and made my way towards the central statue in Runeweaver Square, just like Ialion and I had agreed on.

Several lanterns lit up Dalaran, and the chill from before was even worse now that it was night. There were mostly only guards on the streets, everyone else retired after a long day in the floating city. I found the statue soon enough, a massive statue of Lightforged gold, with the long-dead Tirion Fordring in the middle, Ashbringer held high, with several members of the Liberality Confederacy around the bottom. The statue radiated the Light, its energies flooding over the surrounding square, illuminating it in the absence of the sun. The statue was decades old, but tended to with such care and concern that it shone like it'd been constructed yesterday. The Lich King's rule had long ago passed into history. Fewer and fewer people lived who were around back then, but I'd always remember.

"Well, here we are."

I gasped and turned around to see Ialion's human form stalking up to me, and placed a hand over my heart. "By the Light, don't _do_ that!"

He held up his hands innocently, but chuckled and bounded over to the statue. "So, the Ice King's apprent - apprent - gah! Apprentice," he said in Draconic, facing away from me.

I responded in the same language. "Right. Well, odds are that he's just being a thief. _But,_ we are in a city of mages, where arcane corruption is bound to be likely. Furthermore, this is the Ice King we're talking about. He's a skilled mage, so any apprentice of _his_ would definitely get an inflated ego, and that makes it all the more likely to be corrupted by the arcane. So, there's a good chance that we've got something on our hands here," I said.

He nodded, turning back to me. "I wouldn't be surprised. I mean, Azeroth's been relatively quiet recently. _Too _quiet."

I had to agree. Besides the perpetual, and rather _pointless_, conflict between the Alliance and the Horde, Azeroth was rather calm. The Scourge were long-since brain dead with Arthas being killed, the Burning Legion kept poking around but otherwise did nothing of note, and the Twilight's Hammer had all but vanished off the face of the planet. The Kingslayers had long ago killed N'zoth, and since then the remaining Old Gods hadn't shown their faces. No world-shaking cataclysm had occurred, no enemy came to finish a war they'd started long ago. It all seemed _too_ peaceful, but I wasn't going to complain.

"Well, this kinda thing's happened before, right? I mean, not a lot happened between the War of the Ancients and Medivh's little episode." When he opened his mouth to speak I cut him off. "_I know_ that stuff happened, like Arathor, and the founding of the High Elves, and all that. But compared to the shit that happened every five years or less after the Dark Portal, there was ten thousand years of quiet. Looks like we're in for another quiet time."

He shrugged. "Maybe we are, maybe we aren't. So, how do you want to go about doing this?"

I thought for a moment. "Well, how about this. I go talk to the Ice King, and you go snooping about in the twilight realm?"

Ialion nodded. "Sounds like a plan to me. Do you know where he is?"

"Yeah, of course. He is going to be in for a rude awakening."

"If he's that powerful of a mage, do you honestly want to annoy him by waking him up in the middle of the night, Amanthe?"

I waved off his concern. "Somehow, I'll manage. Take care."

He snorted. "I always take care of myself." Twilight energy began to light up his hands, and panic seized in my chest. I quickly hit him with a silencing spell, causing the twilight energy to disperse.

"Not _here,_ you idiot!" I hissed at him in Common. "By the Light, do it someplace where nobody's going to see you!" He glared at me, mumbling behind his forcefully shut mouth. "Yeah, you can take care of yourself. _Obviously._" His glare intensified, but I turned around and began my trek to the Ice King's place. I shook my head as I did.

Teenagers.

_'Hey, you awake," _I asked, pressure above my ears appearing.

_'Yeah, what is it?_

I yawned. _'There might be something happening here in Dalaran.'_

_'Oh? I'm curious.'_

_'Yeah, according to Ialion the Ice King's apprentice is going corrupt. He may not be, but better safe than sorry.'_

_'Um... Amanthe, who's the Ice King? Oh by the Titans, don't tell me there's another Lich King - '_

_'Don't be silly, Selriona. The Ice King is the pen name that a powerful frost mage uses. Nobody has a clue about his real name, but every few years he takes an apprentice and teaches them tricks about frost magic. And his most recent apprentice has stolen a holy artifact and is in hiding.'_

I could envision her shaking her head. _'Wonderful. Hey, how's Ialion?'_

_'He tried to open a portal to the twilight realm in the middle of Runeweaver Square, but other than that he's fine, if a bit ground-sick. Right now he's supposed to be in the twilight realm, looking for the apprentice's corruption trail.'_

_'And you?'_

_'Me, I'm going to go ask the Ice King about his apprentice. Maybe he can give me a direction.'_

_'Isn't it night where you are?'_

_'Yeah, he's going to get a rude awakening.'_

_'Alright, if you insist.'_

_'And how are things over on your end?'_

_'Absolutely boring. Nothing happens in Silithus anymore, but you can never be too sure. I mean, C'thun died here. Verthelion's purged the corruption there long ago, but you never know with those sneaky Old Gods.'_

_'How're the night elves treating you?'_

_'Well, seeing as how they think I'm one of them, quite well. But Silithus is a desert. _Nothing _happens in a desert, because anybody willing to stir stuff up doesn't want to _go_there. But, we gotta keep an eye on it.'_

_'Yeah. Stay safe.'_

She snorted. _'Oh, believe me, I'll have no trouble with that. Take care, Amanthe.'_ The link faded away. Soon, I found myself at the Silver Enclave, where the high elf guards at the entrance let me pass without a word. I looked around, getting my bearings among the row of buildings. Everyone in Dalaran knew where the Ice King lived, of course, just as much as they knew where the statue commemorating the fall of the Lich King was. I found a little staircase on the side of a building and followed up it, stopping infront of a wooden door. I raised my hand and knocked forcefully on the door, and waited.

A few moments passed, and I knocked again, a little more irately. This could be important. And as late as it was, that was no excuse!

I knocked again, only for the door to open a moment later, revealing a sleepy face.

The Ice King was certainly ancient, his short cut hair white framing a wrinkled, somewhat tan face. Tired gray eyes stared out at me, and he groaned. "Who are you and what do you want at this unholy time of night?" he asked in a creaking, worn voice.

"I'm here about your apprentice."

His face softened immediately, and he stood aside, moving shakily like he had trouble controlling his body, letting me enter. The inside of his home was quiet lovely. Purple and gold carpets lined the floor, and a chandelier hung in the middle of the room over a table. Several doorway led to other parts of the house, and a glass shelf held some ceramic plates.

"What do you want to know?" he asked me, closing the door. He let out a hacking cough, kneeling over. When he stopped, his hand shook slightly. "And more important than that, who's asking?"

"Elizabeth Brown. I work at Eonar's Greenhouse, but that's not important. I want to know precisely what happened with your apprentice."

He sighed, and motioned to a chair. I silently moved to sit down, as did he, shuffling his feet unsteadily. "My most recent apprentice was a gnome by the name of Whirlgo Fritzsprocket. He was a brilliant apprentice, and absorbed techniques like a sponge does water. However, the past few weeks he's been growing excessively cocky and arrogant."

"You think that he's, maybe...?" I trailed off.

The mage sighed, then coughed again. "Corrupt. I fear he may very well be, despite all the effort we go through to steel our minds. Dalaran takes such things seriously, but of course, we can't save everyone. A few days ago, he broke into my home and stole an artifact that I have spent a good portion of my life trying to obtain."

"Would you mind describing this artifact? I mean, if you don't mind."

"No, not at all. It's a little disc with a purple crystal in the middle, a draenic recording of a first encounter with a Naaru. It can project the image, and even the sounds, though it is in a language I can't understand. You would not believe the trouble I went through to try and get my hands on it, but now he's stolen it."

"Why would he have stolen a draenic artifact?" I asked, a little wary now. What would a mage want with a recording of meeting a Naaru?

He shrugged. "Hells if I know. He's cocky; I wouldn't be surprised if he stole it just because he could. He got it, got out, and proceeded to freeze several of the guards who tried to stop him. Then he vanished." I frowned. A draenic artifact? Odd. But then, his apprentice was a gnome. The draenei have very good technology; it would be like his race to try and reverse engineer it.

I sighed. "Alright. Thank you for your time. I'm going to go see what I can do."

"If I may ask," he said after another series of coughs. "Exactly what authority do you have to conduct an investigation?"

I winced. "I don't have any. But the more people that know what to look out for, the better, right?" I said with certainty, looking him in the eye. "Never know who he might show up around."

The Ice King just nodded, albeit slowly. "Alright, I suppose that's good enough reason," he said cautiously. "You find anything about him, let me know, alright? And even more important, let the guard know."

I nodded, and stood up. "I shall. Thank you for your time, Ice King." I swept towards the door, the sound of coughing echoing behind me as I closed it.

* * *

><p><span>Ialion<span>

I slipped into a little alley between two of Dalaran's buildings. I hadn't smelled anyone here, and my nose held true. No windows to look out onto it, either. I smiled. Perfect.

It was far too rare I had reason to enter the twilight realm. Using the magic in Dalaran was risky, due to all the mages around, and more to the point, all the magical detection systems there'd be. So whenever I entered the twilight realm, it had to be for a damn good reason.

Dark blue energy lit up my hands, and I struggled against the volatile nature of magic to manipulate the energy into a portal. It was a challenge for me to open a portal, but it was a challenge I'd overcome many times before, and this time was no different.

A shimmering, purple and black portal opened up, stars in the middle of it, and I stepped in. Blackness briefly enveloped me, before falling apart into the twilight realm. I turned around and placed a hand on the portal. With a thought, it closed. I found it so much easier to close them than open them. Only natural, of course, since while opening it the magic tries to close it, the portal trying to fall into the twilight realm itself. I rolled my shoulders, delighting in the comfort of the plane of reality belonging to our Flight, and headed out of the alley.

The night sky, normally black, turned a deep indigo color. Shadows rippled where I walked, and heavy gray mist flowed in rivers along the streets. I turned around, and found a little hole in Dalaran's walls, resembling a sewer grate, but with a person-sized hole in it. I slipped through, finding the neatly-tended stones under my shoes turning into cracked, rough stones. If I'd been in the physical realm, I had no doubt there would be all manner of slime and mold growing along them as well.

I turned a corner, and continued my descent into the bowels of Dalaran. Within minutes, I felt something slosh around my feet. I frowned, and continued through the murky sewer water pouring along the ground. With a hop, I reached dry land, and began to peer around, looking for the trail of corruption that might have accompanied the apprentice. Iridescent crystals stuck out of piles of junk, twisted heaps of discolored metal with the occasional gem sticking out of it. I turned right, hopped over a few other streams, and found something.

It was faint, to the point of being nearly invisible, but no doubt about it, there it was. A narrow red filament through the Underbelly that hadn't been there last week.

I turned around, and began following the path. I frowned. Red mist? There was demonic corruption in Dalaran? Of course. Mages were often enticed by demons for power. This wouldn't be the first time I'd killed a mage turned Legion warlock. I licked my tongue over my teeth, which briefly sharpened into fangs, remembering the one in Feralas. That had been fun.

The path bent through the damp, dismal paths of the Underbelly, hopping above streams, twisting in between open spaces where the apprentice had likely moved in between people. Several times it dipped into an alley before coming out as they presumably hid from the guards. The trail of demonic corruption slowly got stronger, until eventually I found it enter a vast chamber entirely flooded with sewer water. A ripple in the water, a large one, indicated a large fish in it. Wooden planks formed a bridge across the indoor lake, with a couple dozen tents scattered about the area. The trail of corruption wove through the Black Market, passed in front of one of the tents, and then left out the same way it came in. I sighed, and followed the trail. Once again, I was forced to jump across little rivers of filthy water, chasing after the red mist, trying to find where it ended.

Finally, I found it enter a cylindrical tunnel, the ruby fog intensifying rapidly. I ran through it, and came to an end. The tunnel ended by looking out over a night-time Crystalsong Forest, and the trail of corruption ended just at the edge. I peered over the tunnel. Nothing.

I roared, and launched a fireball out of Dalaran's sewer exit. A dead end. A blasted dead end. Wonderful. Of course, being a mage he'd know how to portal out of Dalaran, or even subtler, just teleport out. I stomped the ground, letting my full strength show by cracking one of the tiles. Sighing, I placed a head in my hand. If that trail of corruption wasn't the apprentice's, I'd eat my own wings. Even if it wasn't, it still needed investigation.

I smoothly stepped off the edge, plummeting down. I sighed in relaxation as the air whipped around me, before wings sprouted from my shoulders and my hair condensed into horns, my clothing turning to scales and melding with my body. Fingers and toes fused, the remaining ones turning into massive, curved ebony claws. I roared again, and spread my wings to catch the air. I soared up, laughing as my ground-sickness fled my body. I ascended Dalaran in mere moments, my speed fueled by pent up energy and the strength my wings gained from the twilight realm. I twisted in mid-air, high above the city, and dove down headfirst. I loved diving, the exhilarating rush of air past my ear-plates, and tug of my wings as they strained to open and catch the air. I waited a few moments, then flipped over and thrust my wings out. My deadly fall slowed, until I touched down with all the impact a feather makes.

I sighed, missing the skies already. My form contracted back to that of a human, and I found another alley, a different one this time, where I left the twilight realm. I looked around, and stepped idly out of the alley, searching for Amanthe.

It wasn't too hard to find her. She was waiting for me back at the statue, sitting on one of the benches facing the commemoration. She looked up when I approached.

"Hey."

"Hey."

"Find anything?"

I rubbed the back of my head. "Arcane corruption, not a trace. However, there was a path of demonic corruption that I followed around the Underbelly." Her eyes narrowed at 'demonic', but she said nothing, instead screwing her eyebrows in thought. "I followed it, and it ended in a sewer tunnel that led... out. The person making the trail either portaled or teleported out, and I'll bet you ten stags it's the apprentice."

She sighed, shaking her head. "Light damn it. The Legion, again. It gets worse. Apparently the apprentice stole a relic of the draenei from the Ice King. This feels awfully familiar. Remember Orgrimmar? The Legion went after a draenic artifact then, now they're doing it again, I bet."

I groaned. "Great. Just great. So, what do we do now?"

Amanthe stood up, looking me in the eye. "What do you think we do? We go after that gnome. Where do you think he may have gone?"

I shrugged helplessly. "How should I know? He could be anywhere on Azeroth, maybe even on Outland."

Amanthe snapped up. "Outland, that's it. The Legion has their strongest presence there. It'd make sense for their courier to deliver an artifact to Outland. The Legion wanted the artifact, they corrupted the apprentice, got him to steal it, and now he's going to deliver it to the Legion. We need to stop him."

I shifted my weight to one leg and crossed my arms. "And how do you suggest we do that? We don't have a clue where he is. We might already be too late, he might still be in Crystalsong. Titans damn it, he could be in Kalimdor for all we know."

Amanthe sighed. "He's going to be headed towards Outland, that's our best bet. So he probably teleported to Stormwind. But maybe he was paranoid of being followed, and went somewhere else to throw off suspicion? What then?"

I pondered this for a moment, pacing back and forth infront of the statue. "Well, then we need to cover as much area as we can. Let's take a boat to Stormwind, and from there fly to the Dark Portal. That way, we go through the most amount of space possible. If we're wrong, he'll get to Outland before us, but if we're right, we won't miss him."

"But why not just wait at the Dark Portal? Why not just spring a trap?"

"We might not recognize the apprentice when we see him, and if we watch for the trail of corruption in the twilight realm, we won't be able to get out into the physical realm quick enough. And besides, we don't know how bad this is. The mage taking a relic of the draenei might just be the tip of the iceberg; if we go the long way, we can get more help if this does turn out to be a small part of a much larger plan."

Amanthe nodded. "Alright then, Ialion. Go get some sleep; tomorrow, we're taking a trip."

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><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<br>**


	12. Chapter 12:Powerful Paladin

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.  
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**Thanks to my beta dharak.  
><strong>

**Chapter published on 6/9/12  
><strong>

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><p><span>Amanthe<span>

My shoes clicked along the stone streets of Dalaran as I made my way towards Eonar's Greenhouse. The hustle and bustle of people on the streets made my skin prickle with the heat the many individual bodies gave off, in addition to the relentless heat the sun rained down on the city, far too hot for Autumn, let alone Autumn in Northrend. I turned a corner and headed into the Magus Commerce Exchange, ignoring the people on the sides of the road talking with each other, some making wide hand movements to accompany their statements.

I turned around at the appropriate corner and entered the glass dome of the greenhouse I'd worked at for the past seven years, and _wilted._

The inside of the glass building, trapping the heat of the sun, did so in order to help the plants survive and grow. Unfortunately, it also gave me the illusion that I was _dying._ My skin prickled in the intense heat, I gasped through a suddenly dry mouth, my head itched underneath my hair, and my clothes stuck to me. I stumbled my way through into the smaller, sealed-off building inside the greenhouse. Here the heat diminished, thanks to frost magic. I spotted Jonathan behind the counter, face red and gleaming with sweat.

"Hey Jonathan, can I talk to you?"

He gave me a tired smile. "Hi, Liz! Sure, about what?"

I frowned. "One, I told you not to call me that." He gave me a weak smile at that. "And two, I've decided to use my vacation days."

He raised an eyebrow. "Oh? That's a first. How many do you have accumulated?"

"A month's worth." It likely wouldn't be enough to get to Stormwind on boat _and_ track down the apprentice, _and_ get back to Dalaran. But if I came back and ended up fired, I could just use my Orb of Deception for a new form, new job, no problem. Wasn't anything I hadn't done a lot of times before.

He frowned. "Yeah, that seems about right," he whispered to himself. He sighed. "Alright. You've been a good employee. You deserve time off." I smiled. "But if I may ask, out of curiosity, what's the occasion?"

_Shit._ I wiped sweat off my brow. "Uh, it's for a, um, family reunion," I said awkwardly, unprepared for the question. Should've expected that.

If he noticed my hesitation, he didn't show it. "Ah, nice. Where is it?"

"Stormwind," I said. That lie was easier; after all, the plan Ialion and I came up with involved going through Stormwind.

He nodded. "Nice, nice. Hope you have fun."

"Thank you. If I may, can I go pack my things? It's hotter than a Red dragon's fire here."

He raised an eyebrow at the unusual comparison, but didn't question it. "Oh don't be such a baby." _Baby? _I was easily twice his age!

A brief blue light lit up his hands, snowflakes floating off his palms, and I scoffed. "Easy for you to say, you're a mage."

He waved his hand uncaringly. "Yes, yes. You can go, Elizabeth."

I curtseyed to him. "_Thank_ you, Jonathan. See you in a month." _Or however long it takes to get my hands on that corrupt apprentice._ I turned around and headed back out, briefly crushed over the intensified heat in the greenhouse itself, before entering the main streets of Dalaran once more, which were largely unchanged in the short amount of time I'd been inside Eonar's Greenhouse. People still crowded the streets, wandering on their ways to wherever they had to go, as uncaring of presence as I was of theirs.

I found my home again in Runeweaver square, climbed the stairs to the door, and opened it with the key, walking inside. I sighed, looking at the little chest, sealed with strong magic, that contained the puzzle box I'd gotten from the Twilight's Hammer cult a long time ago. My eyes lingered on it for a moment, and startled by that realization, I shook my head and fished out a leather bag from my closet, and stuffed it with a hundred gold coins or so from another chest, one under physical locks as well as magical ones. Living eighty years tends to make one accumulate a bit of wealth, but I didn't spend it, rather hoarded it. Spending large amounts of money every which way would just attract attention, after all.

I grabbed a few other things I'd need for the boat trip; a change of clothes, and a few flasks of water. We could buy food. I lifted the bag onto my back, stumbled under the not-inconsiderable weight for a moment, but then grew used to it. I left my home, made sure it was locked, and left for the Silver Enclave, where I assumed Ialion would be. We'd agreed, at the crack of dawn when he'd _barged_ into my house, that we'd go at high noon.

I passed into the Silver Enclave, and looked at the variety of portals scattered around here. The re-activated portal to Stormwind tantalized me, but I knew Ialion had a point. The apprentice stealing a draenic relic was probably just the tip of the iceberg. We'd need help, help that we'd have a better chance of getting through a longer journey.

It was a risk, I thought to myself as I moved over to the portal leading to Valgarde Keep, to the Howling Fjord. The inside of a port city shone out from the other end, but I turned my gaze from the portal to the sweltering sun high above.

Noon. And where there's noon, there should be a Twilight drake.

So where was the Twilight drake?

I sighed, then realized we'd forgotten, while deciding _when_ we'd meet up, to decide _where_ to meet up. I groaned, palming my face. Of course, Ialion would forget that making these plans in the middle of the night would tend to make me forget a few tiny details like that.

"Okay Amanthe," I whispered to myself. "If you were a Twilight drake in Dalaran, where would you wait?" A lantern flickered to life in my skull. "The middle of the city." I turned around from the relatively isolated portals and made my way towards the statue in the middle of the city, the same one Ialion and I had met up at yesterday to discuss the Ice King's apprentice. The number of people on the streets was a lot smaller, now that most were at their respective jobs, so there was no hassle from bumping into crowds in reaching my destination.

Sure enough, there was Ialion, sitting on a bench, one foot tapping idly on the ground while he looked at the statue, his back to me. He got up when I entered the block, no doubt hearing and smelling my approach. He had a smirk plastered on his face.

"Well, well, well. Look who decided to show up," he said, idly sauntering towards me while the sun beat down on us with all its might.

I growled at him. "I'd assumed you'd be in the Silver Enclave."

He rolled his eyes. "Well, that's not exactly my fault, is it?"

I threw my hands in the air. "Fine, fine. Are you ready to go?"

Ialion continued to take slow, uncaring steps in my direction. "Oh, of course. Got everything you need?"

I nodded. "Yep. Money and water for the trip, and I can't bring food."

Ialion raised an eyebrow. "Why not?"

"Because I have my doubts about it not spoiling over the trip to Stormwind. We _might _be able to find a mage, but I don't think we'll find one who knows how to preserve food right."

"Ah, well, that makes sense. Time to get going then, since you held us up," he said smugly. He clapped his hands together. "Well then, lead the way, Amanthe."

I spun around and led Ialion back to the Silver Enclave, and pointed him towards the portal to Valgarde Keep. I gestured my hands towards the shimmering portal, arcane energy being drawn in towards it.

"Well, there it is. In you go."

Ialion stepped up next to me and reached out a hand. The moment a finger touched the shimmering portal, he vanished with a little _pop_ of arcane energy. I crawled into the portal, and my world turned into a seething torrent of arcane energy around me as the portal yanked me through the Twisting Nether. Bright blue and white walls surrounded me in a tunnel, and I could see a few flecks of dark red and black along the walls of the Nether. Then, just as quickly as I entered, I left. I stumbled for a moment as the portal left me on solid ground, and a sudden wave of cold smashed into me, courtesy of the bright gray clouds enveloping the sky.

Oh yeah. _That_ felt more like Northrend.

I hadn't been to Valgarde keep in a long time. Last I had been there, it was a very small port town, as well as a well-fortified base from the Northrend campaign over a half century ago. Now, it had expanded significantly, with the threat of the Vrykul having died with the Lich King. The river that once ran outside the walls was now neatly situated within a newly constructed, larger, thicker wall on which I could see the dark outlines of archers. More buildings had been created in this new space, and soon enough homes for residents had been erected, however few they were.

A boat was docked at the end of the pier, the sails folded, and chains wrapped around the dock as it swayed on the waves, but was held immobile. Looking behind us, I saw that we'd been transported by the one-way portal to one of the newer buildings, a tower that held twisted labyrinths of stairs and bookcases.

I smiled. "Alright, let's get to the ship. We need to talk with the captain, see if there's still a spot left open to buy."

We got to the boat, and where I easily hopped on, then turned back to Ialion, who looked thoughtful. He sighed, and crouched down, jumping over, his strength letting him clear a very wide distance. He stumbled a bit as the boat swayed on the ocean, but got his balance.

"So, where do we go from here?"

I pointed towards a doorway in the boat. "Go speak with the captain, see if we can't get a spot aboard this ship."

He nodded. "Alright, seems reasonable." He stumbled a bit as the boat rocked again.

"Ialion, have you ever been on a boat before?"

He slowly shook his head. "No, why?"

"That explains it. Hope you don't get sea-sick."

"That explains what?"

"You're stumbling."

His legs buckled again as another wave passed under the ship. "I am not!"

"You just did," I said, placing my weight on one foot and tapping the other. "Anyway, come on, follow me." I turned around and led Ialion into the interior of the ship. We found our way through the cramped wooden corridors easily, arriving in a room that must've belonged to the captain of the ship.

It was a wide room, with a desk pushed against a wall, and a doorway off to the side, who's hallway vanished around a corner. On the desk was a pile of papers, in no recognizable order. As we stepped in, a good dozen sheets of paper slid off their piles with a _shrrrrrrr_, landing on the floor. A few maps of various regions of Azeroth, some of just the ocean, no land in sight, were scattered around the desk. There was also a compass. In the middle of it all, an open, heavy, green-leather bound book. It was filled with chicken-scratch handwriting, with a pen in the middle of the fold.

The captain arrived in the room a few moments after we did, emerging from the doorway around a corner. He was an aging man, with wrinkles around his face, but laugh lines under his eyes. He wore a blue uniform on and the symbol of the Alliance over his heart. His gray hair formed a ring around the bald spot on top of his head, and he had a little white beard. He looked over us with steely gray eyes as he entered, then smiled.

"Ah, look what we have here! You need something, yes?"

I stepped forward. "Actually, yes. Ian and I want to take your ship to Stormwind."

"Ah! Civilians. Why, of course! The fee's ten gold, each."

I sucked in a breath. That was a bit more than I'd expected, but we could survive on eighty gold easily. "Right, of course. Just give me a moment." I slung my pack off and placed it onto a tiny ledge on his desk not occupied by paper, and ruffled through it before pulling out a fistful of gold coins, giving them over. I closed my leather pack and swung it back over my shoulders as he counted them out.

"Eighteen, nineteen, twenty. Alright, that's good. I, of course, need names for the log. Um, what's your name, dearie?" _Dearie? _I twitched at that. We were around the same age. I didn't care he couldn't have known that, he couldn't have been that much older than me, if at all.

"Elizabeth Brown."

"Elizabeth... Brown," he said, taking his pen and scribbling in the green book. He looked up once done. "And what would be your name?"

"Ian Purifen"

"...Purifen. Alright, that's all I need. Your room is five-H, key's on the inside. However, we won't be departing until tomorrow high-noon, so I suggest you enjoy your stay in Valgarde while you can." Here he broke into a wicked, somewhat unhinged grin. "Try to be on the boat by the time we depart. You'll miss the ride, and won't get a refund. Welcome aboard the Northspear."

Ialion nodded to him. "Thank you. Come on, Elizabeth. I think I saw an inn on the way here, we can grab a bite to eat." He stumbled again as the boat rocked, then turned around and led me out. I followed after him, down the docks, and onto solid land once more. Soon, I saw the inn he had meant. As far as inns went, it was on the large side. Out of it poured a warm light, and the scent of meat and tea. We walked in side by side, and I quickly took in the sights.

A worgen woman with steely fur and equally gray eyes stood behind a counter, polishing an empty glass with a snow-white rag, in front of shelves containing all manner of food and drink. There were a few empty tables today, the other occupied by two men of my own race, another with a night elf woman and a tauren man, likely from the Cenarion Circle, judging by the tauren. At another table sat a draenei man with golden clothing, facing us, drinking some kind of yellow drink. I recognized him, but of course, nearly everyone alive back during the Northrend Campaign and the Cataclysm would recognize him.

"Kingslayer, draenei, paladin," I whispered to Ialion in Draconic, eying Aruen as we stepped inside.

"Right. We get his help?"

I nodded. "Right. You go talk to him, get him comfortable around us. I'll go buy us something to eat."

"Got it." We parted ways, Ialion moving towards Aruen, and me towards the worgen who now busied herself with placing away the glass she'd just cleaned. I approached her, and decided I'd get Ialion some meat.

"Hello there!" she said with a disgustingly cheerful tone as I got within earshot. "What can I do for you? Something to eat? Something to drink? A place to rest?"

I frowned. "What do you recommend? Not a place to rest, though. We've got that covered."

She rubbed her chin. "We? Oh, you came with someone else?"

"Err, yes. What would you recommend for us to eat here?"

She kept rubbing her chin. "Hmm... the meat basted Caribou and some seal whey, coming right up."

"Erm, that's okay. We've got drink."

She waved her hand. "Please, I insist! You haven't been here until you've tasted that stuff."

I frowned. "Erm, okay, I guess. How much will that be?"

She paused for a moment, mouth fluttering in silence as she rapidly calculated. "One gold. Hang tight, I'll be right back!" She whipped around and flew into another room. I heard the faint knocking of stairs for a moment, then again after a few minutes as she practically flew up the stairs with two plates expertly balanced on either hand, each one with a slab of dark brown meat glistening with juices, and a glass with the same yellow substance Aruen had been drinking. By that time, I'd fished out the gold, and I handed it over to her the moment she set them down on the counter.

"Alright, thank you! Hope you enjoy your stay here in Valgarde. It's really quite scenic - "

I cut her off. "Yes, thank you," I said, taking a gold-colored plate in each hand, careful not to spill them over. My nose wrinkled at the smell of something... _odd._ I turned around and found Ialion, sitting across from Aruen, apparently striking up a conversation. He'd pulled another chair to the table for me. How nice of him.

I placed the two plates on the table, and sat down in the chair. Aruen turned his head to me, glowing blue eyes curious.

"Ah, you are Ian's friend, are you not? Or was I mistaken when the two of you walked in?"

My skin tingled. Here I was, before a _Kingslayer,_ making casual conversation. Blood rushed to my face. "Um, uh, yeah. You don't mind, do you?" I asked.

He raised a hand. "Not at all, not at all! We're people too, you know," he stated with a friendly smile. "I can see there's something you two need to ask of me."

The entire conversation felt awkward and somehow fake to me. How would we appear to him? Like beggars, asking for spare coin? Ialion saved me the embarrassment of having to tell him. "Well, we're tracking a criminal, a gnome mage by the name of Whirlgo Fritzsprocket, from Dalaran. We believe he's heading to Stormwind, and he's stolen a draenic artifact."

Aruen's eyebrows shot up, and he leaned forward, now that this involved one of his race's relics. Ialion continued. "We have reason to believe he may be corrupted by the Legion, and we were hoping you might be able to help us, in case this matter of a stolen artifact is just the tip of the iceberg." Ialion bit a large chunk out of his meat, and swallowed it like it was the size of a grain of sand. Aruen narrowed his eyes at the 'human' across from him, but I'd long since gotten used to his stronger throat muscles.

Aruen sat back. "Hmm. This is very interesting, what you have told me. The Legion, stealing an artifact of my people." He sipped his drink again, making me eye my own. "Alright. I have little else to do. I will aid you in this journey. We will make a stop in Stormwind, there is someone I know there who would enjoy this mission very much."

I grasped my glass, nearly shaking in excitement. What luck! A member of the Liberality Confederacy, _helping_ us! Victory was practically assured already.

Aruen continued. "I assume we will not have time to stop?"

I shook my head. "No, we're going post haste after them. Think we can get a portal to Stormwind?"

To my disappointment, the paladin shook his head. "No, I'm afraid not. You see, Valgarde's mages have been transferred further north to aid to Alliance in fighting the Horde. This happened last week, and there's been no sign of them returning."

Ialion frowned. "Wonderful." At that point, I lifted the yellow fluid to my mouth and drank it...

_By the Light!_ What _was_ that shit? It tasted a little bit like cheese, but only just. It was awful, pungent, and repulsive and I wanted it _out_ of me. I coughed, and accidentally swallowed it while taking a breath, making a small bit enter my lungs.

My eyes watered, and I splayed out my hands on the table, coughing like someone with pneumonia. Ialion sounded concerned. "Hey, um, you okay?"

I spoke in between coughs. "Breathed... in... ach." My eyes watered until I had to close them because they stung. I could breathe, but I almost wished I couldn't. I felt someone pounding my back, with the force as to nearly break my back. I glanced up, and noticed Ialion was missing from his seat.

As time passed, eventually I got that awful fluid out of my lungs, and my coughing subsided, but I still continued to cough since my lungs had _not _enjoyed that experience and intended to teach me a very important lesson about what goes in them and what doesn't.

I groaned miserably, still coughing. "Elizabeth, are you alright?" came Ialion's voice from somewhere out of reality.

"I'll live," I croaked out, coughing again. I looked up."What in the name of the Light was that shit?"

The Kingslayer frowned. "That would be pungent seal whey. Didn't you know?"

I coughed. Oh gods, it felt like I was going to die. "No. Remind me to never drink that again. I need water." I slung my pack onto my lap and rummaged through it, and pulled out a leather flask. I opened it and trickled water down my throat, making sure not to accidentally breathe it in. When I was done, my throat somewhat soothed, I pulled it away and coughed again, but less forcefully.

"Alright," I said. "That's better. So, what are we going to do for the rest of the day? I mean, there isn't exactly much to see in this place, is there?"

Ialion shook his head, back in his seat. "No, not really. Unless you want to see the aurora."

I sighed. "Yes, but I've seen those in Dalaran dozens of times. They're nothing new." Aruen just looked at the two of us, but said nothing. "Maybe we can go on the boat, read something. Civilian boats always have libraries on them."

Ialion shrugged. "Sure, I guess." The rest of the meal was spent in silence, until we finished our food and I gave Ialion my seal whey, which he downed, drawing a repulsed look from me.

Ialion was the first to stand. "Alright. Thank you, Aruen, for agreeing to help us. It's really appreciated."

He waved his hand. "Oh, it's no trouble. Stopping the Legion is paramount, especially if they have a relic of my people to reverse-engineer." He frowned. "Strange. The Legion has never done anything like this. They're too confident in their own abilities. I'll see you two on the boats." I stood as well, done with my meal. Ialion followed me out of the inn into the open sky, which was suddenly a lot darker than when we'd come in. The last rays of the sun were vanishing over the horizon, stars lighting up the sky. Ribbons of blue and green stretched across the sky, slowly stretching and compressing like accordions, their light making it impossible to see the Circlet of the Titans.

Ialion and I filed onto the ship and headed for our cabin, looking for a way to pass the time. Maybe we could sleep.

As I stepped on, I smiled. We had a Kingslayer on our side. How the hells could we lose now?

I shook my head as that though entered my mind. Don't tempt fate, Amanthe.

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><p><strong>This is the chapter from hell. I was ~3000 words into it, when Fanfic decided it hates me, so when I next clicked 'Save', it reduced the 3000 words into an unholy mix of commas, apostrophes, and periods. Anyone who's had this happen knows where I'm coming from, but to those who haven't had a doc destroyed before, pray it never does. It's horribly demoralizing, and I almost couldn't bring myself to write it again. So that's my lame-ass excuse for the delay. Sorry about that. I wish I could promise it won't happen again, but that's entirely up to fanfiction not nomming a chapter.<strong>

**Review, let me know what you think.  
><strong>


	13. Chapter 13:Terrible Sickness

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.  
><strong>

**Thanks to dharak for being my beta.  
><strong>

**Chapter published 6/16/12**

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><p><span>Amanthe<span>

Dragons don't like boats.

I find this a rather amusing fact. I busied myself in the Northspear's library, reading all manner of fiction books such as the Transfleshism Conundrum, a book that showed two worlds, one where the denizens of Azeroth never get the curse of flesh and live in dystopia, and another version in utopia, and the two worlds colliding. Quite a fascinating read, and with nothing better to do, I finished the massive book on the fifth day of our journey. Once that was done, I went to look for Ialion, who I rarely encountered up to then, absorbed in my book as I was. I found him pacing up and down a hallway, muttering to himself in Draconic, head down, hands in pockets that he'd shapeshifted into his clothes.

I stood infront of him, and he just turned around and began pacing the other way. He reached the doorway, and turned back to me.

"Alright, I'll bite," I said, following him as he paced. "Who stepped on your tail?"

A deep growl resonated in his throat. "It's this blasted _boat. _I can't stand it here! It's driving me out of my mind!" He stopped pacing lengthwise and started to pace from one wall to the other infront of me._  
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I raised an eyebrow. "Ialion, we haven't been on this boat for a week. The trip to Stormwind takes almost three, give or take some time for weather.

He snarled, throwing up his hands but continuing to pace. "I am going to insane! I can't handle this!"

"You're getting groundsick, aren't you? Ialion, it's only been five days. I'm sure it's all in your head."

"Of course it's all in my head!" he snapped at me. "Groundsickness in its entirety is psychological, so my environment is going to have an effect on its course! And this Titans-damn claustrophobic _boat_ isn't helping me at all!"

"So just go on the deck and - for the love of the Titans, stop pacing! You're making me nauseous." He obediently stopped, but began bouncing on the balls of his feet.

"Do you think I haven't tried going on the deck? Maybe _your_ nose isn't bothered by the smell, but I can't stand the smell of the ocean! The salt, the seaweed - "

"There's no seaweed this far out."

" - the rotting fish! If I stay up there more than a few minutes I'll regurgitate." He brought his hands to his head, webbing them over his face. Ialion began pacing again. "Rrrrgh, I'm going to lose my mind! I've got half a mind to leap off this... this... unholy machine and fly to Stormwind myself!"

I chuckled. "Because drakes are made to be able to fly cross-continent."

"Not the point! What am I going to do? Can't you do some weird shadow priest mind-thing on me?"

I shook my head. "No, sorry. The most I can do is look through your eyes, mind control you, or soothe your mind, and I have doubts about how well that one will work."

"I don't care! Try it. Better than nothing." I sighed, and called on a small portion of my mana. The shadow energy wrapped around Ialion's head, briefly clouding his eyes. He closed them and let out a long, drawn out sigh. "That did nothing. Must be my shadow resistance." He moaned, clawing at his face. "I am going insane! _I__nsane!_"

I nodded. "Right, well, you have fun with that. I'm going up top." I passed by the increasingly groundsick Twilight drake, and found the stairs that led up top. The deck was, like always, hard and shiny, courtesy of some paint that the gnomes had come up with to prevent water damage. Any water that fell on the deck slid off as the boat rocked, not seeping into the wood. It also reflected the light, making the sun glare into my eyes from the ship. Masts stuck high into the air, but there were no sails on them, just ropes to help the crew climb up if needed. A rumbling from the back of the ship gave away the mechanism powering the Northspear, steam engines churning a wheel to propel us forward.

A few other people headed to Stormwind were on the deck as well, leaning over the side. I caught one dwarf leaning so far over I thought he was going to fall overboard. I saw something yellow come out of his mouth, and turned around in revulsion. This far out to sea there was no sign of land anywhere at all. Nothing but the ocean extending as far as the eye could see, waves, and waves on the waves, and waves on the waves on the waves, the ocean sliced through by a streak of froth behind the ship as it plowed through the vast expanses of water. The sun shone high overhead, the light reflecting off the waterproofed floor and up onto me, roasting me from both above and below at the same time.

I'd have to be careful to avoid sunburn.

On the horizon, several massive clouds billowed up, siphoning what strength they could from the ocean, cold with November. One particularly massive storm cloud had passed close by us yesterday, and now the mammoth structure of white, gray and black, shaped like an anvil with clearly defined edges up to its wispy top, sat far behind us. The occasional flash of lightning was all that made it worthwhile to look at.

I stayed up on the deck for exactly fifteen minutes and twelve seconds before deciding I needed to do something else besides counting, and headed back down for a new book. I found my way back to the library, passing a pacing Ialion as I did, and picked out a new book. This one was a scientific study by some goblin named Carlo was about how other planets with life may have been ordered by the Titans, and what life forms may be on them, and all sorts of other things related to the Great Dark Beyond. At least, that's what it said on the back.

The cover had a picture of Azeroth from the Great Dark Beyond with the title, 'Another Azeroth'. The goblins in Outland had managed to figure out how to break free of the planet's gravity, and brought their 'ship' back to Azeroth to get a good look. Nobody cared about it too much outside their community, especially not the draenei, but within the goblin community it was heralded as the dawning of new age. It wasn't. The world moved on without a care. It made for some wonderful pictures, though. I traced my hand along the whirlpool of the Maelstrom, clouds painted onto Azeroth, Northrend's icy cap blending into the clouds. A hurricane moved on the Wetlands. It was odd, seeing the entire planet reduced to such a small space. I shrugged, and began reading.**  
><strong>

Time passed in monotone. Occasionally I saw Aruen, but we never talked much; wasn't much left to say. We'd go to Stormwind, get his friend to help us, and then go catch the apprentice. I sighed. Maybe I could ask him about his friend. Not like I had much better to do. I marked my progress in the book and placed it back on the shelves, intending to return to it.

Finding Aruen wasn't too hard. The paladin stood in the same spot nearly every single minute, the back of the ship's deck, looking out at where the boat churned up spray and left a trail of white water in its wake. The draenei just stood there, looking out to sea, practically all day. Not that I could blame him; there wasn't anything much better to do.

"Hey, Aruen, can I talk with you?"

He turned around, and nodded at me. "Ah, Elizabeth. I was just about to come looking for you. How convenient. I'll let you start."

"Well, I was just wondering, who exactly _is_ this friend of yours we're going to meet?"

"Well," he said, rolling his shoulders. "Now that's a rather simple question. Her name is Orande, she's a night elf. One of our newer recruits, after Kolkna passed away recently." He sighed. "She makes her home in Stormwind. She's a renegade of Illidan's army, a demon hunter. So I feel you can understand why she would like to undertake this mission."

"A demon hunter?" I asked skeptically, taking a step back. "Aren't they kind of, you know, insane?"

He frowned. "It is... true that the training demon hunters undergo is extremely ruthless. It makes the training given by groups such as the Cult of the Damned or the Twilight's Hammer look lenient. Demon hunters from Illidan's former army do, indeed, develop a certain... condition. Orande in particular has a rather hard time with emotions."

"Of others?"

He shook his head. "Of her own. She can never seem to show how she feels. She'll look furious, and when you talk to her she'll speak in a furious tone of voice, but she'll be nonviolent, and behave happy. It makes it hard, if not impossible, to read her emotions. I will be honest, it can get quite strange at times."

I gulped. "Oh, well that's... wonderful. Anything else I should be aware of?"

"She's not temperamental or anything, it's just that her tone of voice and facial expressions don't line up with how she feels. Oh, and she likes to keep her warglaives poisoned. Don't run your finger along them."

I gave out a strangled 'eh'. "Thanks for the warning. So, what was it you wanted to talk to me about?"

He frowned. "Let us retire to my cabin. This is not something prying ears should hear."

I nodded. "Of course. Lead the way," I said, stepping aside to let him walk. I followed him back below deck, and to his room. He opened it, and inside was an oil lamp, a desk, and a bed large enough to house Ialion's true form twice, as opposed to the somewhat cramped bunk bed Ialion and I had. I shrugged. Go figure, they'd give him one of the better rooms on the ship, if not the best. He's a hero. I closed the door behind us, and turned to look at him.

"So, what was it you wanted to talk about?"

"Well, I just want some straight answers. Do not panic, I am on your side. But I have noticed that Ian is a dragonkin." My heart skipped a beat. "I do not know of what Flight, or what rank of dragonkin he is, though. I've fought alongside and against enough dragons to be able to identify them easily enough. If I am to be working alongside you two, I feel it is only right that I know about Ian's true nature. That is, you _do_ know he's dragonkin, right?"

I gulped. I pondered if I should tell him at least the partial truth. On one hand, the Twilight Flight was still hiding in Grim Batol, the mortals' power greater than ever, and the scars from the Cataclysm still fresh in the minds of the more long lived races. But on the other, Aruen would likely find out on his own, and he _had_ fought with Selriona against Deathwing. "Alright. I guess I should tell you. He's a drake, and his Flight, um, do you remember the Cataclysm?"

He nodded. "Quite well. One of the closest calls we've ever had, the battle with the Destroyer."

"Who do you remember assisting you in the fight? I mean, your guild."

"Well, there was Go'el, may he rest in peace. Alexstrasza, Ysera, Kalecgos, and Nozdormu. Oh yes, and a few renegade..." A look of comprehension dawned on him. "You're not saying - "

"One of the Twilight dragons that helped you is called Selriona, and another Verthelion. Ian, Ialion, is their son."

He nodded. "I see. And I assume they instilled him with the correct view of the world, rather than the brainwashed one that they lived in until they realized the reality of things. And what would that make you, Elizabeth?"

I shook my head. "Please, call me Amanthe. Elizabeth's a psuedonym. I'm Selriona's Dragonsworn, and I've been so for the past fifty or so years." I held up my left hand and let twilight flame briefly ripple along it.

Aruen nodded slowly. "I... see. How curious. But, the renegade Twilights saved our lives. I suppose you can be trusted. If I may ask, I do wonder. Following Neltharion's defeat, their Flight vanished off the face of Azeroth. What _is _the Twilight Flight up to nowadays?"

I opened my mouth, then after a few seconds of contemplation, closed it. "Um, I'm not allowed to tell you that. Selriona's Flight, they didn't emerge from the Cataclysm in such great shape. They're in hiding for the moment, at least until their leader decides they have enough numbers to tell the mortal races about what's going on with them. If you want to know, you can ask the Dragonqueen. She understands their situation, according to... yeah."

Aruen frowned. "I see." He shrugged. "I will not press, since you are not allowed to say. But once this mission is complete, I do intend to look into this, starting with who you recommended."

I twisted my mouth into a grimace. "Great. I'm going to go read." I turned around, but Aruen's regal voice stopped me.

"Hold on." I spun on my heels back to him. "I've done some meditating. I am worried about this; there _is_ something more to this than a simple apprentice. I am not entirely certain, but I have seen that the artifact stolen now will be used in conjunction with another one stolen five decades hence. Where, and for what purposes however, I was not able to glean."

I shivered, recalling the Legion's invasion of Orgrimmar. So these two events were related. Just wonderful. "Alright, thank you. I'll be on the ship... not like I've got anywhere to go." As I turned out, I worried over how much of a mistake it was to tell him about Ialion.

* * *

><p>Ialion didn't last long on the boat.<p>

Within ten days of our twenty day journey, he sprinted up and around the boat constantly, fidgeted in one spot, or played with little pieces of wood chipped off the ship. Several times the crew approached him and asked if there was something wrong, and he responded each time with a rushed, "Ijustdon'tlikeboats." He was just as bad as Selriona had been in Stormwind when we figured out what groundsickness even was. Then, one night, with a week left to our destination, while the crew served everyone aboard the same meal as always, fish, Ialion burned out.

I cut my fish with my fork, some strange species of fish I'd never heard of, living out in the open ocean. I sat on my bed, Ialion's right above me. Currently he was out somewhere in the boat, trying in vain to burn off his excess energy.

I placed the piece of fish in my mouth, delighting at the oily, ocean taste, chewing it until all the flavor seeped out before swallowing. At that precise moment, Ialion barged in like an earthquake, face red and glistening with sweat, hands shaking like a leaf.

"Ihateboatssomuch," he belted out, before jumping up onto his bunk and collapsing without another noise. I set my plate to the side and got up, climbed the ladder to the top, and looked at him.

Ialion laid face-down on his covers, drenched in sweat from sprinting nearly continuously around the ship for the past Light-knows how long, taking quick, shallow breaths and moaning.

"Um... Ialion?"

"Quiet!" he groaned.

"Sorry, I whispered. "You crashed, didn't you?"

Despite his sorry state, he managed a snarl. "No, I just decided to randomly lay down even though not moving hurts. Speaking of which, help me move."

"Alright, and how exactly am I supposed to do that?"

His voice went up, but not by much. "I don't know! Just hurry up and do something, I've got to move! I have to!"

"Ialion, I hate to break it to you, but you're groundsick - "

"Really? I didn't notice."

"Shut up. You're groundsick, so I have doubts that I'll have any spell designed to cure that. You're just going to have to push through it."

He whimpered. "It hurts."

"Your mom didn't progress through groundsickness this fast when she lived in Stormwind, you know."

"Maybe because she didn't have to put up with this Titans-damned claustrophobic _boat!_" He whined again. "I need to move something. Please..."

"Ialion, there's nothing I can do for you. You'll just have to put up with it. Try to get some sleep."

He closed his eyes, twitching ever so slightly as his body demanded movement, but was unable to provide. I fell back down to my bunk, and continued my meal, wincing every time I heard Ialion groan and whimper in pain above me. I knew he was in terrible pain, but neither of us were able to do anything about it, short of shifting him into the twilight realm to fly, and the boat was small. I could only create twilight portals when absolutely needed. Finally, I finished my dinner, and laid down in my bed, listening to the anguished groans of the dragon going through flight withdrawal. After much effort on my part, and a few mind soothes directed at myself, I fell asleep.

* * *

><p><em>'He must be going out of his mind,'<em> came Selriona's voice.

_'Can't say I'm surprised. Damn, groundsickness must suck.'_

_'You have no idea. The sickness is the worst. I felt like I was being spun around, and rapidly cooled and heated. Everything hurt; light, sound, even thinking.'  
><em>

_'Which explains why Ialion's blown out the lamp in our room,'_ I thought, looking into the pitch black area Ialion suffered in.

_'Yeah, that's it. Wish there's something that can be done, but there's no cure for groundsickness. He'll just have to put up with it for... how much longer?'  
><em>

_'We reach Stormwind today.'_ I took another look back in. _'Hey, does the illness portion of groundsickness get better or worse over time?'_

_'It gets worse, from what I've heard. I don't think anyone's gone long enough without flight to know what comes after, except for Pallasion, and you know what _he's_ like.'_

_'Mm-hm. Well, judging by his whimpers, Ialion's been getting worse over time. Groundsickness isn't deadly, is it?'  
><em>

_'Not on its own, no.'  
><em>

_'And what's that supposed to_ _mean?' _I asked incredulously.

_'How much has he been eating and drinking?'_

Comprehension dawned on me. _'Oh, I see. He _has_ been __drinking a lot less, and he hasn't eaten in days. Lucky we get off at noon.' _I spread out my hands, and let twilight energy flow along them. A portal opened, and I stepped through it, entering the physical realm. I closed it, sealing Ialion within the twilight realm until I went to go get him. Or he opened a portal himself, but the odds of that were in the same boat as me drinking seal whey again. I closed the portal, and turned around, heading for the deck to watch the ship arrive at Stormwind.

_'So,' _I asked. _'Anything new in Silithus?'_

Selriona snorted in my mind. _'Don't I wi__sh. There's only sand here. Sand and insects nearly the size of a drake. But, you know how it is. The moment I leave, Old Gods are going to be bursting out of every nook and cranny here. How many are there left again?'  
><em>

_'Well, let's see. C'thun, Yogg-Saron and N'zoth are down. That leaves two, which don't seem to be doing much.'  
><em>

_'Maybe they're afraid of the Kingslayers?'  
><em>

It was my turn to snort along the link. _'They're Old Gods. Old Gods don't get scared, fear gets Old Gods.'  
><em>

_'Then maybe they're waiting for the right moment to strike.'  
><em>

Well, _that_ wasn't paranoia inducing at all. I found myself staring at the cracks in the ship's wooden planks, as if spiked tentacles would burst out of them at any moment. _'You _do _realize how incredibly unhelpful that is, right?'_

_'Um, right. Sorry.'  
><em>

I reached the deck, looking at the approaching shoreline, the towering city of Stormwind a dark outline. I took a deep breath, the air now noticeably different in smell, still smelling strongly of the ocean. But not as much now, since the scent of the city was mingling in, like the smog from the Dwarven District, the water of the Canals, and the pollen of the Park and Mage Quarter._  
><em>

It's been too long.

As the ship pulled in to the dock and the crew anchored it down, turned off the engine and made it safe to get off, the clanging of a bell announcing our arrival, I turned around from where I watched and went to go find Aruen, tell him the situation I'd do to help Ialion. I found him within seconds, looking out at the approaching capital city along with a few other passengers. "Aruen."

He turned to me. "I need to help Ian recover once the boat docks. Where can I meet up with you?"

"Orande likes to make her home in the Park. Go towards the pool; trust me, you will not miss her home." I frowned. A demon hunter. This was not going to end well.

"Alright, thank you. I just need to help Ian cure himself without anyone seeing."

Aruen smiled at me. "What exactly _does_ he need cured?"

I smirked. "I can't tell you _that_ either, giving away the weaknesses of dragons, and all that."

Aruen frowned, then shook his head. "I understand, I suppose. I will be waiting for you two at Orande's home." Aruen took a step off the ship, jumping down a little as a wave rocked us higher. He walked off into the harbor while I turned around and pushed through the crowd, trying to make my way to Ialion, ignoring the whispers of the others saying 'That's the woman going with _Aruen_'.

I entered the room, and swiftly entered the twilight realm, closing the portal I created behind me. I looked at Ialion, in his mortal form, curled up and breathing shallowly. He could've been unconscious for all I knew. I sighed, my heart aching at how much he must've been suffering from the lack of flight. I wove a levitate on his body, watching him rise slightly above his ruffled bedsheets. I placed my arms under him, and brought him out slowly. He winced when we left the dark room, even though the twilight realm diluted the light, digging his head into my chest like a puppy.

When we reached the deck, I set him on the ground, removed his levitation, and spoke to him with a soothing voice in Draconic. "Alright, Ialion. You can fly now."

_BOOM!_

A massive wall of scales and flesh knocked me back as Ialion snapped into his true form faster than I'd ever seen a dragon do before, knocking me on my back. Twilight energy surrounded the area he'd been in, trailing up as he flew around the boat faster than I could follow, making amazing loops and paths around the ship's masts. After a few minutes of impossibly fast flying, and drinking some water from the ocean as dragons are able to, he came next to me in a hover. His wing beats blew a stinging wind into my eyes, his speech still a rapid flurry, but slowing down._  
><em>

"Alright,sonowwhere dowego?"

"We go to the Park. Are you doing alright?"

He shook his head, and let out a guttural moan. "Neveragain. Never again. Iamnever gettingonanother boatas long asI live." I noticed his speech began to slow down as he went on, words previously mashed together coming apart. "Whereare we going? Anight elf, right? Ordid I miss something?"

I shifted my weight onto my right foot, and crossed my arms. "No, a night elf, that's right. We'll go there in the twilight realm, so you can keep flying, then we find her. According to Aruen, we won't be able to miss her home."

Ialion nodded, still hovering next to me. "Alright. Leadthe way, Amanthe." So I did, walking through the twilight realm with Ialion flying above me, making up for lost time, sending waves through the mist of the twilight realm, bouncing off stones and towers like ripples in a pond. We exited the harbor without problem, and soon found ourselves entering the rebuilt Park of Stormwind. The grass was nonexistent in the twilight realm, the Park being shown to us as a field of dirt encircled by stone buildings, a cage of stone around a field of dirt, open only to the purple, shadowed sky, choking fog hugging every corner.

"Ialion, think we can leave the twilight realm? We're close."

He realized what this meant, and let out a high pitched whine. "Amanthe, I've only just started flying!"

"You can fly again soon, don't worry. We just need to talk to Orande."

He landed, pouting to reveal razor sharp fangs, and guided me with a wing towards an alley where nobody would see us. "Alright, fine. But you owe me for this."

I patted the top of his head. "I'll find a way to make it up to you. Now," I said, spreading my hands, twilight energy flowing along them, cold and wet against my skin. "Let's go." I opened the portal, and stepped through, entering the physical realm in moments. Behind me, Ialion appeared in a human form, more emaciated than usual. The dirt around me now flourished with grass, flowers of all colors dotting the land. The smell of nature permeated the air, sharp in contrast to the sterile, empty scent of the twilight realm.

Ialion sighed. "Alright, let's go find this elf." So we set out to find Orande, taking in the scenery of the Park as we did. Butterflies fluttered on the breeze, and I caught Ialion looking at them longingly more than once, bouncing on his feet as we walked.

"You're still a little sick, aren't you?" I asked him.

He sighed, shoulders drooping. "I won't deny that. I can take it though, and Stormwind's a lot better than a boat. Don't worry about me. Hey look, a pond." I looked towards where he pointed, and sure enough, there was a pond, built to replace the moonwell Deathwing had burned down over half a century ago. Lilly pads floated along the surface, flowers blossomed along some of them, and more than once I caught a ripple on the surface as a fish swam through the waters. Around the pond, arranged in a triangle, were three moonwells, their water glistening a bright white, flowing light into the air, making me feel like they were beacons in the night even though it was the middle of the day. The stone walls opened up here, creating a mammoth structure encircling the tranquil scene, pierced by archways that led to elsewhere in Stormwind, and dotted with doors for the residents who lived in the park. Most of these doors were fairly nondescript, but one stuck out like a sore thumb.

A black door with green spirals overlaid on it was on the far side of the pond, barely in my range of sight. I pointed it out to Ialion. "Think that's it?" I asked.

He bit his lip, and nodded. "I bet it is. Let's go. I've never met a demon hunter before. This'll be interesting."

"Yeah, neither have I." Before too long, we arrived at the door, and I raised a fist to knock on it. The wood was smooth, the black and green paint glossing along it. It looked like a smooth coat, no bubbles or thick spots. Whoever did this was talented.

The answer was swift. The door opened inward to reveal a night elf standing half a head over me, a pack slung over her shoulders. Her green hair was cut short, ending just below her ears, and she wore black and green leather clothes over her violet skin, patterned in the same swirls as her door. On her forehead was an intricate black tattoo, slightly reminiscent of an eagle diving at her nose with its beak, wings outstretched. The most striking feature, however, was the black fabric wrapped over her eyes, preventing even the slightest glimpse at them. She frowned when she 'saw' us, and spoke in a depressed voice.

"Ah, you're the two Aruen said was coming," she said sadly. I remembered what the paladin had told me about Orande. Was she happy to see us right now, but couldn't express it? "Please, come in," she mused glumly, stepping aside to let us in.

The inside of her home was lit brightly, candles dotting multiple shelves. A few cupboards hung from the ceiling, and a dinner table with a chandelier hanging above. Aruen sat at the table, and behind the it, on the far wall, was a framed painting of a scene from Outland, black stone with green cracks in them against a starry sky, with the pale orb of Azeroth hanging far overhead, an enormous mountain belching green fire reaching up towards our world. I saw no bed in her house. Where did she sleep?

I moved my line of sight and beheld two warglaives hanging on a hook on the wall, shaped like crescents, the black metal having jagged edges and a handle on the inside to grab. Green tinted their edges, making me remember what Aruen said, and nudge Ialion. "Poisoned glaives, try not to touch them."

Orande spun around, her face furious and her voice the same tone. "Oh, so Aruen told you about that, didn't he? Good of him to do so. Wouldn't want you two _dying._" She turned back and led us to the draenei, who nodded in our presence.

"Excellent, you are here. Now we can discuss what to do. I've already informed Orande of everything I know." He looked pointedly at Ialion. "_Everything._ So, Amanthe. Where do you think this apprentice is going?"

"Outland," I answered. "I suspect he's going to Outland, since that's the only place the Legion has any real power anymore. I bet he's going to deliver the artifact to them there, so we need to catch up with him before he succeeds."

Orande shifted her weight on her feet, sounding as bored as possible. "Alright, but why doesn't the Legion just open a portal and take it from him? That's something they would do."

Ialion hummed. "Or maybe it's a dual mission. One, he delivers them the artifact, and two, he has to trek all the way to them to prove his worth. So all we need to do is outrun him. Aruen, do you have any way of figuring out where he is right now?"

The paladin brought a hand to his chin. "As a matter of fact, I do. Orande, do you have a map?"

Sounding even more bored, which I assumed meant she was even more interested, she answered, taking off her pack. "Of course I do. One moment." She ruffled through her stuff, and pulled out a sheet of parchment the size of her head, and laid it on the table, exposing a perfect, if small, rendition of the Eastern Kingdoms, Kalimdor, Northrend, and Outland. "Will this do?" she asked, leaning with one elbow on the tabletop.

Aruen gave her a smile. "Yes, it will. It'd be better if the map was a little larger, but this will serve me well." He turned towards me. "What is the name of the apprentice?"

"Whirlgo Fritzsprocket, why?" I asked.

He sighed, placing a hand on either side of them map. "Excellent, that's all the information I need. Give me a moment." He closed his eyes, and Light began to flow around his hands. It sunk into the map, criss-crossing it like a spider's web, leaving glowing trails all around the map, before the lines began to collapse around a single point. They moved faster and faster, until they formed a little glowing dot on Outland, in Hellfire Peninsula, just at the Dark Portal. He took his hands off, the glow of scrying magic vanishing, and with it, the dot.

"We have his position," said Orande happily. "Just entered Outland. We need to get moving." She looked at me, smile too big for her face. "Amanthe, do you have a weapon, or anything?"

I let myself briefly flicker into a shadowform. "Just my magic. That's all I really need, though."

She nodded, and looked at Ialion. "You're a drake, so you have weapons on your own." She turned finally to Aruen. "Aruen, do you need anything?"

He rubbed his chin. "Well, I could use armor, and my hammer. I'll stop by next to the bank to retrieve them. Orande, do you need anything?"

She shook her head, still smiling. "No, I just need my warglaives, and I'm good to go. Aruen, you go get your armor and weapon, then go to the gryphon master. We'll go the Blasted Lands. No time to send a message to the others, the apprentice is already in Outland, so we need to hurry." She turned to me. "You two go to the Blasted Lands too, got it? Nethergarde keep." Her smile turned into a frown, her cheer to depression. "Finally, a chance once more to drench my blades in the blood of demons."

Ialion and I both shared a look, then took a step away from Orande.

"Well," I said. "Let's get going then." Orande took her warglaives off, and placed them on her back, some magic adhering them to her clothes. She then rolled her map back up, placed it into her leather pack, and swung it onto her back over the weapons. She nodded to me, and we turned around, Ialion leading us out of her house. Aruen soon left us, heading to get his armor and weapons, while we stuck with Orande until we reached the gryphon master. She turned to look at us.

"Alright, we meet up at the Blasted Lands, Nethergarde Keep. Don't dally; we've got demons to kill," she said angrily, with a faint green light flaring behind her eyes at 'kill'. With that, she turned away from the two of us and began talking to the gryphon master, exchanging words and eventually, coin.

As she flew out of the city on the tamed animal, I turned to Ialion, talking quietly so nobody would overhear us. "We're not taking the gryphons, are we?"

"Nope," came his curt reply, not turning towards me.

"You're going to insist on flying me to Nethergarde yourself, aren't you?"

"Yep."

I sighed. "Let's go get a harness, then. I don't want to risk falling off _again._"

Ialion bristled. "That was _one_ time, Amanthe. _One _time."

"I almost fell into a lava pit!" I hissed at him. "I'm getting a harness!"

He pouted like a child. "Fine."

* * *

><p><strong>Well, lucky this chapter wasn't eaten. No, I'm not bitter about that at all.<br>**

**Massive thanks to all you wonderful people who read, reviewed, favorited and alerted. You know who you are. It boggles my mind each day how far I've come in this story.**

**Review, let me know what you think.  
><strong>


	14. Chapter 14:Prideful Drake

**Disclaimer: I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Thanks to my beta dharak for looking over this.  
><strong>

**IMPORTANT! As of the 28th of this month, I will be going to Hungary to visit relatives. I will be back on the 16th of next month, and until then, I will be 100% inactive on fanfic. I will place the Vacation status on my profile; until that has been taken down, I have NOT returned.  
><strong>

**Chapter published 6/25/12**

* * *

><p><span>Amanthe<span>

Air rushed over me, making my hair fly back and occasionally whip around to slap me in the face. The only sounds were the rushing of wind, and the rapid flapping of Ialion's wings over Elwynn forest. The air stung my eyes, and I leaned over Ialion's back so that I wouldn't have bugs flying into my face. The harness we used was a simple one; a loop around Ialion's shoulders and a strap from it that led to me, wrapping around my body to keep me from falling off. A good idea, since Ialion seemed hells bent on going as fast as the Deeprun Tram.

I sparked twilight energy along my hands, trying to figure out the ability my interest had piqued in. I manipulated the lines of magic, the commands, the statements and the variables, but the twilight energy was uncooperative. Finally, with enough energy in my hands, I cast the spell off to the side. A ball of twilight energy appeared in mid air, but fizzled and dropped to the earth. I groaned. That was the tenth twilight explosion that I'd failed to cast. While learning new spells was, granted, a task, the more spells you know of a certain school the easier it becomes to learn others within the same school.

I pulled my mana up again, and tried to create another explosion, but this lacked the energy, and just emerged as a dark blue puff of smoke that flew behind us.

_'Damn it! I just can't get that explosion spell down.'_

_'Have you tried setting the radius for the explosion?'  
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_'I did. The energy just doesn't behave the way I want it to. Maybe it's how I teleport the energy to the location?'  
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_'Well, I can see how that might be it. Try aligning it to the nearest ley line, that might keep it from losing as much energy in the teleportation.'  
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_'Worth a shot.' _I focused again, reaching inside of my body and drawing out twilight energy, weaving an invisible cocoon around the dark energy in my hands, keeping it from dispersing. I wove line after line of magical instructions within the spell, like a spider's web, then grasped at one of the ley lines on Azeroth, a minor one flowing just below Ialion, and attached the orb of twilight energy to it. Then I cast the spell.

On one hand, it worked, creating a burst of twilight fire in mid-air large enough to engulf a small cottage. However, the size meant the power behind it was less than it could've.

On the other hand, my aiming was off and the nova nearly blasted Ialion, who bawled in panic. _'Did it work?_'

"Titans, Amanthe! Be careful!"

_'Yeah, it worked. Thanks for the help.'_ "Sorry, Ialion. I missed."

_'Hey, anytime.'  
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"Well be more careful! I don't need you trying to kill me."

"Ialion, that was twilight energy. I kinda doubt it would've done that much to you."

"But still!" I sighed, and leaned over, scratching him near his ear-plate, making him purr lightly.

"Alright, Ialion. I promise I'll refrain from trying to blow you up with our Flight's energy from now on."

Ialion stopped rumbling, and turned his head to look back at me, while still flying. "Our Flight?"

"Yeah?"

"You said, 'our' Flight. That's the first time I've ever heard you say that. Not 'your' Flight, 'our' Flight." Ialion turned his head back around.

I fidgeted on his back, sitting up straight. The moment I did, something smacked into my cheek. I wiped my hand there, and tossed away the mosquito that had splattered against my skin. "Well, what of it? I am, as a Dragonsworn, a member of the Twilight Flight."

"Yes, but you've always referred to yourself as being sort of outside it. This is the first time I've ever heard you include yourself." He bounced his back a bit, making me bounce a little. I chose to interpret that as a friendly nudge. "You're warming up to us!" I scooted forward and smacked him on the side of his head, hitting an ear plate.

He shook his head, trying to clear the ringing, and bounced me on his back again. "I'll drop you if you do that again."

"You can't, that's what the harness is for."

"I'll burn it off."

"I'll levitate down."

"... I hate you."

I didn't reply, instead gazing out at the skies, the occasional fluffy white cloud dotting the area, slowly being tinted orange as the sun went down. Already, on the far end of the sunset I could see the faint red glow that signaled Azeroth's shadow. The faint wisps of a diminutive cloud trailed over me. I breathed in the cold moisture before it passed away, leaving my skin goose-bumped and wet. Far, far below me, Elwynn forest passed by us. The trees from this height condensed into a rippling sheet of orange and yellow, all the colors of autumn, with a few vibrant evergreens sticking out.

I looked up, watching the clouds sail past us to the tune of Ialion's rapidly beating wings and pants. Something tapped me in the forehead, and I wiped that bug away as well, leaning down on the drake's back to keep more from hitting me. How was that not bothering him?

"Ialion, why exactly are you panting?"

"Why do you think?"

"You're trying to fly fast, I got that much, but why?"

"Amanthe," he said. "Orande and Aruen are on gryphons."

"Yes..." A pause. "A-a-and?"

His voice rose several octaves and decibels. "I am _not_ letting those two filthy, domesticated _prey_ animals beat _me, _a proud member of the Twilight Dragonflight!"

"Oh, I see," I said, comprehending his problem.

"I _can't_ let them win! To do so would be to bring shame to dragons everywhere."

"Then why don't you just use the twilight realm?"

He snorted. "Because that gives me an unfair advantage. I have to beat them under my own power."

"Ialion, you _do_ realize these are passenger gryphons, right? They've been bred for decades, maybe even centuries, for speed and endurance, and fly these routs constantly. And Orande's gryphon had a head start."

"It doesn't matter!" he roared. "I am a dragon, and they are feathered cats!"

"Well, if it matters to you so much, I could give you a shield, boost your speed for a moment."

He shook his head. "No, I have to do this on my own power."

I sighed. "Alright then, Ialion, if you insist. But you do know you'll have to stop for sleep and food, right? Especially after your little famish aboard the Northspear."

As if on cue, Ialion's stomach roared at us. "I can go that long without food, Amanthe."

"Yes, but is it a _good_ idea to do so?"

He growled along with his stomach. "I'll grab something to eat on the flight, and I've already drunk enough water from the docks."

I shook my head. "I still can't get over you dragons being able to _drink_ sea water."

Ialion shrugged his back. "I don't see any problem. Doesn't taste the best, but it's nothing dangerous or anything."

"Speak for your own species."

"I will. Oh look, we're out of Elwynn." I looked over Ialion's side, past his flapping wings, and saw that we had, indeed, passed the river separating Elwynn from Duskwood, as night continued to fast approach. In the darkening twilight, colors faded from my sight, but even so I could make out the stark contrast between the two forests. Whereas Elwynn was vibrant and full of life, Duskwood was akin to a crypt. No trees in Duskwood browned as autumn approached, but rather they retained their dreary coloring year round. Even from such a distance, I could see enormous spider webs stretching between the trunks, and more than once I noticed a mammoth spider resting on its web.

I sighed, my legs dangling off uncomfortably, sending slight cramps up my legs as Ialion continued to fly through the night. Stars popped out, one at a time, as the sun's light winked out. The Blue Child was on the opposite end of the sky compared to the White Lady, and the river of stars the dragons called the Circlet of the Titans stretched between the two. I heard Ialion's ragged breaths as he struggled to keep going, and slowly, his wings began to skip beats, creating lurches in his altitude. Finally, I had enough.

"Ialion, you need to rest. You're hungry, you've just come out of horrible flight withdrawal, you're _sleepy_. The world isn't going to end if you sleep and eat."

"No! I don't need to rest, especially not if those gryphons can make the flight in one go!"

"In case you've forgotten, I'm riding you, and if you drop, so do I, and I'm not going to be able to levitate with you pulling me down." I took a breath. "And besides, you're not the healthiest you've ever been. You are going to sleep, even if I have to mind control you to do so, shadow resistance be damned!"

We started to descend.

* * *

><p>Anyone with any sort of mental disorders should be forbidden to enter Duskwood.<p>

It wasn't the first time I'd been in the forest, of course. But that hardly mattered; a million trips would never diminish the trepidation that oozed out of the trees like sap. The distant howling of terrified worg as spiders trapped them in their webs echoed through the air so that it was impossible to tell how close the predator-prey interaction was. The fireplace blazed from where Ialion and I had worked quickly to set up a ring of stones around dry wood, sending shadows flickering away from us like demented wraiths. Ialion's form rested nearby, the dark blue scales blending in seamlessly to the surroundings, his lighter underbelly scales seeming to radiate the light his wings appeared to trap in the daytime.

The bones of an unfortunate worg sat in a neat pile, the ones that Ialion hadn't bothered to crunch in his powerful jaws. I'd eaten a fair share of the canine as well, and now inclined sleepily on a tree trunk, watching the steady rise and fall of Ialion's wings, tucked close around his body. I shuffled uncomfortably, unable to find sleep, and considered using a mind soothe on myself. I pushed the idea away, not wanting to use magic for such trivial matters. I sighed, and got up from the trunk, brushing the chipped bark off of my back. I walked over to Ialion, sleeping close to the fireplace to use what was left of its heat to warm his blood in the otherwise cold woods, the dark tinted leaves doing nothing to alleviate the November cold.

I lifted one of his wings and crawled in, using what little natural heat his reptilian body gave off to lull me to sleep. My eyes blinked as his wing instinctively folded back up, covering me and obscuring the world with a deep shade of indigo. My eyes blinked again, and then there was nothing.

A moment later I was up, a breath stuck in my throat, sweat clinging to my face. I eased my breathing, and crawled out from under Ialion's wings, where my body heat trapped body heat had created a miniature greenhouse. I got to one foot, then both feet, looking back at the still sleeping drake. His breathing was slow and shallow, as it should be with deep sleep. I squinted my eyes, then looked towards the dull embers of the fire, now put out. I frowned; I had hoped the firewood we'd collected would last longer than that. I went for a tree to break off a few branches when I heard another eerie howling. I froze in place, and shivered.

Gods damn Duskwood. I shook my head, and continued gathering firewood, setting it in a little pile off to the side of the fireplace. The howls came again, louder this time, closer. I froze. Wonderful. Worgs. Just what we needed. I turned around and spotted a ripple moving through the darkness. I growled, and hurried up with putting the wood in the fireplace. The hair on my spine prickled, and I hurried up. A snarl reverberated through the air as I finished up. I launched a twilight fireball into the wood, and it bloomed with dark indigo flame, before melting into a standard red blaze, illuminating the pack of worgs that had surrounded the two of us. A dozen, maybe more hiding in the trees; worgs tend to travel in large packs. I gnashed my teeth. Wonderful.

I spotted one in particular, in front of the others. The ribs on its stomach showed through the fur. I nodded in comprehension. That explained why the pack was willing to attack a dragon, even a sleeping one.

"_Ialion,_" I hissed. "_Wake up._" The drake didn't so much as stir, prompting me to look back at the circling wolves. I turned around; they were all around me.

"All right," I growled. "Bring it on." I'd faced much worse things in my life than a pack of starving wolves. I wove a bubble of Light around myself, and shifted into shadows. I struck first, letting loose a mind blast at one wolf. The blast of shadow magic shredded its brain, and it fell with blood dripping out of its ears. The others all attacked at once. I whispered a shadowy word, causing one to drop, whimpering pitifully, before it fell silent. By then, I'd woven a flesh-eating plague onto another, which collapsed in a similar manner, twitching as the magical disease siphoned its life essence for me. Then the others reached me. A great deal of them smashed onto my barrier all at once, dog-piling me. I fell to the ground as my barrier pushed me, where I flayed at their minds one by one, causing them to fall off and out of my line of sight.

All too soon, their fangs and claws bit through the shield, and I instinctively screamed as they slashed at the shadows making up my body. I took a deep breath, and opened my mouth again, but this time I _shriek__ed.  
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The pack of worg fell away from me in a heartbeat, animalistic instincts overridden by magical fear. I turned towards Ialion, and wove a shield around the as-of-yet uninjured drake, just to be safe. That drake could sleep through the end of the world.

I turned back, and a worg slammed into me, one that had been out of range of my scream's magic.

"Light damn it!" I fell back, breath knocked out of my and a sharp pain in my sides where its claws pinned me, and brought my fist on its nose, making it pull back, just long enough for me to bring up the magic needed for a fireball and blast it in the stomach. Its eyes widened once, then fell dark and limp. I spared a moment to cast a renew on myself, and turned back to the other worgs.

By that point, its packmates had recovered from my spell, and circled me, no doubt getting into position to attack. But I had another plan, based on a spell I'd learned roughly a decade back when the rebuilding Scarlet Crusade had captured Selriona and I while we were watching carefully for a dreadlord to take control of them... _again. _The starving canines attacked me strategically this time, going for my ankles and my wrists, and trying to quickly bite my throat.

But I was having none of it. Just as they attacked, I let myself sink further into my shadowform, my body shimmering. My feet dissolved into a dark mist, which rose up over my body, transforming me into more mist.

My sensations changed, as my body shape dispersed into a cloud of darkness. My body occupied a different form than I was used to, and it just felt _strange._ The animals slammed into my body, but did nothing beyond slightly disturb the mist. They stopped, mystified, unable to understand with their limited brains where their prey went. I flew through them, unable to sigh in relief as the fluidity of my form allowed my body to rapidly regain mana, without draining my body's water to do so. I moved away from the worgs, which still tried to understand, not yet looking at Ialion. I reformed into the world across our camp, the campfire to our side. I had a clean shot, and began to race slimy coils of twilight flame around my hands._  
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I whispered a few words to help with the magic, and cast spell.

And, just like that, chaos fell.

A simple spark of blue fire was all the warning the pack had before an explosion of twilight flame washed outwards from their group, calculated to be just large enough to catch all of them. The suddenly heated air rushed out, sending embers flying from the campfire like a river of stars. They howled as the unnatural fire clung to their fur, eating away at them. Twilight flame was most effective against other Dragonflights, clinging to scales until magically cleansed, from what I'd heard, but it's extremely powerful otherwise. Within seconds, the corrupted flame had driven the entire pack, howling and yelping, into the woods, where I heard the gentle roar of the flames die off suddenly as they perished. Once that had happened, I shifted from my shadow form.

I walked to Ialion, who'd done nothing more than roll over when I shielded him, and surveyed the damage. The sudden flash of flame had completely removed all traces of plant life in a perfect circle. No burned grass. No shredded grass. It was all just _gone_. Even the dirt looked dead, more akin to stone or clay than something that could support life. I knew from experience that the magic had sterilized the earth there. The burst of heat had also driven out air, and the dark, melancholy grass stalks that had escaped the clear-cut boundary of life and death were leaned back, but already beginning to slowly bend back into shape.

I took deep breaths, slightly reveling in the destruction I'd just brought about. I lifted my hands to my face, and smiled a bit. I used my holy spells to shield and heal, my shadow spells to inflict pain, sometimes death, and more importantly, move my enemies into position, and then twilight fire to bring down the hammer. And this newest spell... that kind of power at my fingertips! I allowed myself a smile, and a single childish thought; _magic is __awesome._

"Light, that's some spell." I licked my lips. "Take a lot of mana, though," I spoke to myself. I threw my hands back to my side, and looked at the still sleeping, now unshielded drake next to me, completely oblivious to the whole fracas. I walked up to him, and tapped his nose horn. He didn't awaken, instead reacting by turning over onto his back, the wing he'd kept pinned under his body extending and tripping me.

"Mm... Pegasion... my... stag..."

I sighed, got up, and brought my foot down on his stomach.

_That_ woke him up. With the strength of a, well, a dragon, Ialion rolled around, and then away from me, coughing. His eyes blinked, and then opened to reveal thin slits encased in poison.

"Welcome back," I muttered bitterly, "To the land of the living. You know, Ialion, I could cut your horns off in your sleep, and you'd never notice until you woke up."

He bristled. "No..."

"Ialion, while you were out, we were attacked by a pack of worgs. They're dead now, but by the Light! Pray you never have an assassin sent after you."

He shook his head side to side, no doubt to clear the sleep from him. "Well, sorry about that. But they're just worgs, right?"

I nodded. "Yeah. Well, we should start going again. Don't want any others stumbling on us in our sleep."

Ialion nodded, and stood up, getting off the harness. "Right. Those _v__ermin_ have enough of a lead now, anyway," he said with an audible scowl. "Get the harness on. We've got places to go, things to do, gryphons to beat."

I linked the harness around his neck and shoulders. "You're obsessed with them, you know."

He snorted as I climbed on his back, attaching the harness to myself. "As I should be!" I gave him a pat on the neck, signalling I was good to go, and he reared down, wings up. He thrusted his wings down, sending us into the air with a _whoosh._ "As I was saying, I should be! Like I said earlier, I am a_ dragon_, and they are _prey._"

The tree fell away from us, the twigs and leaves no longer scraping Ialion's claws. "Well, if it makes you feel any better, the flight master gryphons always take scenic routs, so that the passengers can get the most out of their experience. They won't change it for the Kingslayers, either; it's too ingrained in their training to go off the path. You're just going as the crow flies."

He raised his head, and gave a powerful snort. "Just as well." He grumbled to himself, "Feathered felines, no business in the sky. Not even sentient. Stringy, I bet." He shook his head. "Well, hold on."

I leaned down over his back, and wrapped my hands around his neck. He took a deep breath, and propelled himself forward with a strong flap, before gliding. He gave out another flap, glide, flap, reaching faster and faster speeds. The treetops of Duskwood flew away under us as Ialion soared through the night, determined to beat the gryphons to Nethergarde or die trying, nevermind that Orande's gryphon had a head start while we searched for a harness. While we flew, I pondered the mission.

It was plain that the apprentice was closer to his destination; he was in Hellfire Peninsula already. But something didn't make sense. The boat trip to Stormwind had taken weeks. In that time, the apprentice had taken a portal - to Stormwind, without a doubt - and then began the trek. Why did it take that long to go from Stormwind to Hellfire? Even on foot, it would not take that long. Something had slowed him down, something had disrupted him. I smiled. Good. That would buy us time.

But then, how fast would he go now? We couldn't depend on him being interrupted on his trek again. Best case scenario, he was on foot, and had to go far into Outland to prove his worth. Worst case scenario, he'd gotten a mount and Hellfire was his destination, and then there were any number of shades of gray in between. I frowned, and decided there was nothing I could do to figure it out. I couldn't project my mind vision across the Dark Portal, so seeing through his eyes (Even if I could find him) would not be possible. There wasn't anything we could do beyond hurry to stop the corrupted mage as fast as possible.

The air around us turned acrid and gray, smelling of dust and death. The trees under Ialion grew twisted and wilted, losing all their leaves. The dark dirt turned to dull gray stone, and a tower loomed in the distance, reaching up towards the sky so steep it was like it had been built to challenge the gods. Shimmers in the air surrounded the top, folding around a space, like they were concealing an invisible platform the size of the Trade District.

Karazhan.

A cold chill ran down my spine as Ialion flew next to the ancient tower, and I felt a tremor run down his back as well. He put on another burst of speed, and we left the tower behind.

We continued to fly, the hours melting into each other. Ialion flew without protest, but his ragged breathing gave away his exertion. I offered to help him with the Light, but he denied me every time. Soon, Deadwind Pass was behind us and we flew among the mountainous region surrounding the Blasted Lands.

As Ialion descended into the region, a tingle passed up my spine. The entire place was red. Red dust covered the land, and towers rose up into the sky, scorched. Flashes of lightning struck far in the distance under an isolated storm cloud, one which showed no signs of moving or dissipating... ever. But that wasn't what made a chill run up my spine.

It was the sensation of shadow magic in the area, from the energy release of the Dark Portal so long ago, which turned the Black Morass into this wasteland. Even now, the dark energy saturated the air, tainting the wildlife and, from what I'd heard, making it unhealthy for any mortal to stay here over two months, without the proper precautions. Luckily, we wouldn't be here that long. Not even a day, if nothing interfered with our journey to the Dark Portal.

Ialion turned left, following the cobble path leading up a bare mountain, a castle barely visible in the distance. Wild hyenas stood around the ground beside the path, snarling and snapping at each other. I caught one grabbing a chunk of stone protruding from the ground and _biting it cl__ean in half._

Fetid corpses of boars, red and spiky, buzzing with flies, were feasted on by two-headed vultures, not caring for the disease. One of these mutant scavengers tried to approach us; Ialion blasted it with a fireball, impacting right at the wing joint. I gagged as the wing detached, and the bird fell to the ground, its own kind already beginning to approach it. I grimaced. "Lovely place, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Ialion wheezed, losing altitude. "We should land. Don't want to be shot down."

"Right." I looked at the land approaching rapidly. Too rapidly. I wove a levitation onto Ialion, not strong enough to make him float, but enough to slow his rapid descent. His claws skidded along the cobble path, but he managed, flapping his wings to create a counter-motion, to land without crashing. I let the levitation enchantment along him dissipate into the Twisting Nether, and began to take off the harness. Once done, I slipped off his back, and walked around to his front. Ialion lowered his head to allow me to remove the harness from him, which I did, and stuff it into my pack. Once done, he contracted to his mortal form, paler than usual.

"Alright Ialion, lets go."

He nodded, legs shaking. "Right. Titans, I am so tired." We started for the castle, Nethergarde keep.

Soon enough, we got within the walls. The guards let us in without a word; no surprise, seeing as how they were there to fight demons, not ask if the people coming in were not part of the Alliance. Even so, I saw their eyes flick towards me, and a few took a step in my direction. The message was clear; no acting out of line here. A magical rune on the ground, blue, briefly flickered as we stepped over it, searching for demonic energy, but didn't raise any alarm.

There were few people in Nethergarde, but the ones that were present wore similar violet tabards. A massive castle stood to our left, within the massive stone walls encircling Nethergarde. But that wasn't our target. After asking a guard for directions, we arrived atop a little wooden ring with a woman wearing goggles on it, just as a gryphon came into sight. Before it touched down, the night elf on it jumped off, did a flip in the air, and fell the three meters she was above the platform with a thud, spreading her arms to the side and kneeling down. She stood up, hands idly fixing the warglaives on her back, and looked towards us in spite of her blindfolded eyes.

"Good to see you two," she mused sleepily. "How long have you been here?"

Ialion's grin was too large for his face. "We only just got here, _and_ we stopped flying before we got here." I could see Ialion bursting into song.

The gryphon master looked towards us, her brow furrowing above her goggles. "Miss Shadowhunt, these are your companions?"

Orande turned tired eyes on her. "Yes, they are. They had their own mount bring them here. Looks like they beat me, too." Ialion gave out a little squeal of happiness, making everyone look at him. After a moment of awkward silence, Orande coughed and continued in her sleepy voice, sounding like she was going to pass out any second. "As I was saying, we are here on business across the Dark Portal. It's nothing of note, just a corrupted mage, but our companion should be arriving shortly. Please, tell him we'll be at the stables."

The flight master nodded. "Of course, I shall. Who should I look out for?" A chill wind blew through the Blasted Lands. Despite being a desert, it's not all that hot here, as far south as it is.

"A draenei by the name of Aruen."

"Alright. Will there be anything else?"

She shook her head. "No." She turned to us, her tired voice changing to anger, making Ialion and I take a step back. "Alright, let's go down. We want to get mounts for the trip to the Dark Portal." Without waiting for us to respond, Orande led us down the spiral ramp, and towards a small building off in a corner, pressed against the stone walls. Inside, I could see a few saddles on the walls, and just as many horses, laying on bails of hay, looking miserable. A dwarven man in the typical Nethergarde attire also stood, looking a bit green. I guessed he'd been here a while. Orande quickly got two saddles. She would've gotten four, but Ialion insisted on two, even as tired as he was. Orande understood in moments why.

Soon, Aruen's gryphon touched down, and he walked up to us. I boggled at how he'd changed. He wore golden plate armor, concealing nearly every part of his body, from his feet up to his shoulders, with librams and hammers decorating it. His helmet revealed only his eyes and his mouth. When he turned to Orande, I could see that on his back was a one handed mace, its hammer made out of a faintly glowing purple crystal. Looking into it made soothing voices chime in and around my head.

The two members of the Liberality Confederacy spoke with the stable master, and within an hour, we were riding across the cold desert, Ialion insisting he take me, and I agreed _only_ if he wouldn't try to outpace the horses.

Ialion trotted between the two horses, which proved their discipline in not shying away from the drake. As the day wore on, and we approached the Dark Portal, the storm cloud loomed closer and closer, its lightning strikes becoming louder and louder, thunder following closer behind each strike. Before too long, we were under the cloud, shaking under the sheer force behind each clap of thunder, or blinded by a strike of lightning. And in the middle of it all was the crater.

The crater was easily the size of Nethergarde itself, maybe a little bigger. I'd never been to Outland before, and I'd been expecting the Dark Portal to be in the very center of the crater, but it wasn't. A little pushed back, halfway between the center and the edge of the crater opposite us. The tingle of latent shadow energy in the air intensified here, and I could see war-torn barricades in it. Spiked walls, broken swords and bows, preserved perfectly by the magic, killing all fungus and decay. The Dark Portal itself was exactly what I'd heard and seen in pictures; a frame of gray stone as tall as a dragon, with two hooded figures on either side with a ramp leading up to a portal holding a starry sky with a green glow near the edges.

The moment we reached the crater, the horses froze. They reared up and neighed fearfully, trotting around the bumpy edge of the crater, unwilling to go further. Orande and Aruen tried to get their mounts to go forward, but to no avail. I got off Ialion, and eventually the elf and draenei dismounted as well, giving the horses the verbal command to return. Being trained military horses, they broke off into a gallop. Back to Nethergarde, for sure.

Aruen kicked a pebble in, and sighed. "Well, that's that. We'll walk in. Let's go." With that, we followed him into the crater housing the Dark Portal. Stepping in, I found it suddenly a lot harder to breathe. The shadow energy in the air was at its thickest here, like a heavy smog, hopefully without any lasting effects. I coughed hard, and so did Aruen. Ialion, no doubt, resisted the effects, and Orande... Aruen said her training had been brutal. She had to have been trained not to show weakness.

I scratched my itching left arm as we reached the bottom of the crater, stepping over broken weapons and shredded pieces of metal from long-gone war machines, or perhaps armor. The towering frame of the Dark Portal loomed in front of us. From this close, I could see the shadows around the Dark Portal ebb and flow like waves in the ocean, and the stars in the portal shimmered. My skin prickled from the shadow energy, and my head hurt. Lightning from the storm cloud struck all around us, sending up deafening claps of thunder and blinding light. The twin figures looked down at us, and they seemed to be saying, 'Turn around, while you still can'.

Inviting.

Before we could get closer to the ramp, though, there was a rush of air. We looked up, and saw a massive winged figure descending towards us rapidly, shadowed against the storm cloud. The dragon landed with an earth-cracking _thud_, and looked down at us. Three tusks extended from each side of its head, and its horns curved to a point, letting smaller horns go under, like a needle and thread. Slitted pupils against a violet iris inspected us, mainly Ialion. From the spikes on the back of the Twilight dragon's forelegs, four in a group instead of three, I concluded it was a male. A white, jagged scar ran down his left eye. It was a miracle that one still worked.

With a _schwing_, Orande had her warglaives out, and lowered into a battle stance, sickly green energy flowing around her weapons, her tattoo glowing the same way.

"Orande, wait," I told her, looking back up at the dragon and switching to Draconic. Ialion and I stepped in front of the others. The glow of fel magic vanished from Orande, and she relaxed. "Hello."

He laid down on his stomach, forelegs outstretched, and greeted me in the same language. "Greetings, mortal." He turned to Ialion, and nodded his head. "Drake. What brings you to my watch post?"

Ialion said, "We're tracking a corrupted mage to Outland. You wouldn't have happened to know about them, would you? A gnome male?"

The dragon shook his head, Aruen and Orande exchanging confused looks. Well, confused on Aruen's part, psychotically joyful on Orande's behalf. "I'm afraid not. I _did_ see a trail of demonic corruption, though. I suppose the mage went through while I was hunting." He licked his forked tongue over his fangs, making the paladin and demon hunter behind us take a step back. "Shame. I believe we need to introduce ourselves. My name's Asphyxion. I watch over the Dark Portal."

Ialion lowered his head to his forelegs. "Greetings. I'm Ialion, this is Amanthe." He motioned behind us. "The draenei is Aruen, and the night elf is Orande." They jerked a little towards Ialion, hearing their names in the otherwise unfamiliar language.

Asphyxion let out a thoughtful growl. "Hmm, Amanthe. I seem to recall that name, and you seem familiar."

I spoke up. "I'm Selriona's Dragonsworn."

His pupils briefly slitted further at her name. "Selriona... ah yes, I met you two at Mount - nevermind. It hasn't yet, yes, I see." He shook his head, as if to clear a buzzing. I raised an eyebrow. He'd met us before? Odds are I forgot; you tend to do that over eighty plus years of life.

Asphyxion stood. "And who are the other two mortals?"

"They're members," I explained, "Of the Liberality Confederacy, helping us stop the corrupted mage. By the way, has anything happened recently around here?"

Asphyxion shook his head, and retracted his six tusks, making him look slightly less threatening. My muscles relaxed subtly. "Well, after I saw that trail of demonic corruption, I peaked into Outland briefly. Turns out, there's a path there as well. Curves slightly towards Terokkar Forest." He yawned, opening his mouth wide and giving us all a good, long look at his razor-sharp fangs. "Extends quite far, if I'm not mistaken. I'd assumed it was just an errant demon. Beyond that, nothing else has happened. At least, nothing I didn't quickly sink my fangs into." He switched back to Common, and turned his gaze to look at all four of us, not just Ialion and I. "Well, if you're to be capturing this Legion-tainted mage, I will not be keeping you. I will remain here at my post. Titans guide your path."

I curtseyed. "Light protect you, as well. Thank you, Asphyxion." I turned back to the others as he faded from sight, sinking into the Twilight Realm until he was invisible. "Alright, let's go. Outland awaits."

Orande walked up to me, still insanely happy. "We'll discuss this little meeting _later_, Amanthe." I nodded to her, and our group continued. We reached the Dark Portal, where Ialion pushed me forward with his snout.

"What is that mortal saying?" he said with a not-so-subtle hint of fear in his voice. "Ladies first?"

I growled at him. "Fine, fine." I tensed my legs, and jumped into the Dark Portal.

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><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<strong>


	15. Chapter 15:Bird Food

**Disclaimer: I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.  
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**Don't look so smug! I know what you're thinking, but going on vacation was merely a setback!**

**Thanks to my beta, dharak.  
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**Chapter published 7/17/12 (Finally!)  
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><p><span>Amanthe<span>

The moment I entered the Dark Portal, everything went black. Endless darkness, total and absolute. My eyes were useless while in that void, and then it ended, the Dark Portal shoving me out onto a smooth, stone surface.

I only had a moment to take in the scenery. A starry sky stretched around me, with massive moons - or planets - visible. Thick coils of green energy traversed around the sky, highlighting several floating chunks of stone. That's all I could see before collapsing to my knees, head in my hands.

I groaned miserably. My head felt like someone had tied a rope to my brain, tied the other end to a dog and thrown a bone. I cracked open my eyes, and the world was blurred around the edges, with a certain stretching that made the things at the edge of my vision seem much closer than the things in the middle, whether or not that was true. I squeezed my eyes shut again. The link. The blasted link with Selriona was stretched too far.

In the corner of my eyes, I saw the others materialize next to me. A heavy, plated hand rested on my shoulder, courtesy of Aruen. "Amanthe, it something wrong?"

I groaned, and forced myself to stand, wobbling as the pain pulsed like a heart, shaking off his hand and looking down a massive stairwell, covered in craters and scorch marks.

"Yes, there's something wrong," I got out through gritted teeth. "My brain feels like it's about to be torn out of my fucking skull! So yes, there is something wrong, Aruen."

_'Well, looks like you were right about the range on the link,'_ I sent to her.

A pause. Then, the message came back, buzzing with static. _'Amanthe... understand... message...off.'_

I narrowed my eyes, a fresh bloom of pain accompanying her message. _'Selriona, what are you talking about? I can't understand you. We just got to Outland, and it looks like - '_

_'Slow...can't... you. Outland... interference.' _Another flash of pain as she sent that message.

_'Outland, interference. Got it. Your messages make my head _hurt._'_

_'What? Can't... what's... on? You're... my... hurt.' _It seemed every message she sent me made my headache flare. Probably went both ways. I wobbled on my feet and leaned to the side, my hands resting on something soft and blue, the shoulder of Ialion's human form.

_'Okay, let's just stop sending to each other. Wait till I'm back on Azeroth.'_ With that, the link faded, but my headache stayed as horrid as before. Great. Just great. I couldn't contact her without making my head explode into agony, and even then she seemed to have my messages as cut off as hers for me. _Just great._

Ialion's concerned voice reverberated along my arm, where I leaned on his side. "Amanthe? What's going on?"

I groaned, forcing myself to stop leaning on him and stand under my own weight, but a wave of nausea rolled over me and I found myself using him as a support again. "It's the damn link. I feel like I'm going to _die._"

Aruen turned his head to me, curious. "What link?"

I growled in irritation. "It's his mom. We have a telepathic link between us, and it's stretched too far here. Ugh. My head..." I wobbled again, but caught myself, breathing deeply. "This is going to _suck._" I closed my eyes, and opened them again when my head began to buzz. I wobbled harder, and fell to the ground, breathing heavily, curling up into fetal position.

I moaned.

* * *

><p><span>Ialion<span>

I sighed, and knelt to scoop up Amanthe, who was shifting and groaning where she lay on the staircase. I looked up at the night elf and Aruen as I picked her up. "So, where do we go now?"

The night elf answered me. "What did that dragon tell you?" she asked depressingly.

"Well, he said that the apprentice's trail of corruption seems to be heading towards Terokkar. So that's the way we'll need to go."

The demon hunter nodded. "Right." She glanced towards Amanthe, her voice taking on a curious tone. "Is she going to be alright?"

I shrugged. Her weight was so little to my strength. Like a carrot. "I don't know. Her link's stretched, she told you that. I'm gonna guess that she's just gonna have a really bad headache for the journey. She'll get used to it."

Amanthe groaned from where I held her. "Used to this... don't make me laugh..."

I rolled my eyes. "Well, anyway, where to next?"

Aruen answered this. "Well, drake, the next place we need to go is Honor Hold. It's the only remaining base, after the Horde's was demolished by an attack. We'll need mounts to overtake the apprentice easily, but the trek to Honor Hold is long. Not to mention the risk of staying on Hellfire's land."

He looked my way. "Unfortunately, this leaves you our fastest method of travel, at least until we acquire mounts from Honor Hold that are used to Outland's... conditions."

I sighed, placing Amanthe onto the ground. She chuckled weakly as I unfurled into my true form. "Well, I guess I should've seen that coming." I flared my wings out to the sides briefly. "Well, come on, then. No point in wasting time; that apprentice is getting further each day."

A moment later, I carried the three mortals on my back as I flew along the vast, barren red plains of Hellfire Peninsula. Outland's conditions indeed! The arcane winds buffeted me, making me sway to the sides repeatedly, and the added motion made Amanthe regurgitate several times. Not on me, luckily. I'd have dropped her if she did _that._

But in spite of the horrid flying conditions, Hellfire Peninsula really is quite scenic. Red, dusty plains stretched out as far as I could see, with pillars of fire frequently bursting from seemingly random locations. In multiple places, the land was dotted with black splotches where no doubt there'd been some kind of explosion.

"I have to ask, though," I eventually asked as we passed over what appeared to be a half-century old siege tank wreck. "Why was the Dark Portal so... empty?"

"Ah, that is an excellent question, Ialion," said Aruen. "You see, after Illidan Stormrage fell, the threat of Kil'jaeden and the Sunwell became apparent. There was a major mobilization of the armies here, and anything not considered overly important was abandoned. Curiously enough, the Dark Portal was included among these." He snorted. "I have no idea why. I've chalked it up to either goblin or gnome bureaucrats. The Dark Portal, not important... honestly. But anyhow, after the Sunwell's threat was quelled, nobody ever saw fit to return the troops to the Dark Portal to make sure demons don't take it back. We wondered if maybe the Legion had infiltrated the Alliance and Horde leaders, but we found nothing. Of course, there are new Generals in command; I expect that by the time we go back through the Dark Portal, we'll have troops to pass through. I hope that answers your question. Or is there anything unclear?"

"Huh, I see. That's... peculiar. But, it really doesn't matter _now_, does it? Of course, it would've been really _nice_ if - whoa!" I said, a fresh burst of nether-wind throwing me off. I fluttered my wings, and pulled them close to my body, briefly diving to stabilize myself. I spread my wings back open, and resumed flight. "Easy, easy. We're cool. As I was saying, it would've been nice if there'd been soldiers to stop the apprentice."

The night elf sighed from my back. "Indeed," she said jovially. "But there wasn't, so now we have to hurry to catch up with him." I moment of silence while she did something on my back. I could tell she shifted her weight, but beyond that, nothing. "I'd meant to take this up with Amanthe, but she's out of it."

"I'm still awake, you know. Ungh... kill me now." came her miserable voice.

"Oh course you are. But you're still out of it. Anyway, what was that dragon talking to you about, drake?"

"The drake has a name, you know. Anyway, Asphyxion, as it turns out, has been watching over the Dark Portal, and he just questioned us as to who we were and our motives. According to him, the mage is headed towards Terokkar."

"Hmm, Terokkar you say?" inquired the night elf irately. "How curious. Drake, do you think you can cut across the vast void and bring us right to Shadowmoon Valley? I'll bet my warglaives that's where the apprentice is headed. It's the only place with any Legion bases remaining, and Terokkar is right that way."

I shook my head. "_No way._ It's hard enough just to fly to Honor Hold, and that's an even longer trip, through probably even stronger nether-winds. No way, no how. We need to go the long way around, sadly."

"A shame. But, wait. The dragon was watching over the Dark Portal. Watching for what?"

"The sort of thing that we're here for. Corruption. You two are going to ask the Dragonqueen after this anyway, so I'll spare you the trip. After Neltharion died, there were only four main Dragonflights. Our Flight was accepted into the fold, and my father," I said proudly, shuffling my wings briefly before resuming their flapping. "Was made the Aspect, my mother the Prime Consort. Our charge is to watch over the corruption in this world and contain it. If I recall, one of our dragonspawn helped you find and kill N'zoth, Aruen. Twenty years ago, was it?"

A pause, perhaps for nodding. "That goblin did give me the most peculiar chills down my spine. I suppose that explains that."

"Oh yes. Let me tell you, Grim Batol was full of cheer after N'zoth died. Quite a celebration, actually."

"Dragons hold festivities?" asked the night elf. "I can't even begin to imagine what a Draconic holiday would be like."

"No, not a holiday," I remarked. "Don't confuse it with those silly annual things you mortals take part in. This was a one-time event. As to what a celebration for our kind entails, let's just say it involves a lot of slaughtered wildlife and lost hearing for any nearby mortals, and leave it at that."

"I see. Grim Batol, then?" asked Aruen.

"Titans damn it," I whispered in Draconic. I switched to Common. "Um, uh... damn, I let that slide, didn't I. It's this damn wi - ND!" I exclaimed, another blast of magically charged air knocking me back. I sighed. "Alright, fine. May as well tell you. Grim Batol is our Flight's home, like the Caverns of Time for the Bronze, or the Emerald Dream for the Green. Now could you _not tell anyone?_ Our Flight is very weak currently, and we don't need the mortal races knowing where our home is. If just one faction were to take up arms against us, well, it would be bad, even as powerful as we are. We're not very numerous, after the war with Deathwing."

"I see. We'll keep this information to ourselves. Won't we, Orande?" he asked with a bit of steel in his voice.

"Yes, Aruen, we will," she said enthusiastically.

The rest of the flight continued in silence, until Honor Hold was in view, a tiny speck of cobblestones on the horizon. I began to descend, slowly approaching the ground so that the guards there wouldn't shoot me down. Even if they didn't know about my Flight, being isolated on Outland, I wasn't willing to take the risk.

I braced my claws for touchdown, when a crackling noise reached my ear-plates. I instantly threw myself into an aerial roll to the left, causing my passengers to let out screams of surprise and protest an instant before a giant column of flame burst from the ground I'd been over moments before, the heat rushing past me and forcing me to close my eyes. My scales prickled, and then the heat was gone.

I flapped my wings in the opposite direction of my movement, slowing me down and landing. "Alright, this is as close as I'm willing to go. Crackle in the ground, flame burst. Good to know."

"I didn't hear anything, drake," the night elf quipped.

"Then I'll warn you. Must be below your hearing ranges." The rest of the walk towards Honor Hold went without much happening. I carried Amanthe, being the strongest out of the three of us physically, even though she insisted she was getting better. Walking up the weathered, nigh-on invisible path to Honor Hold, I couldn't help but look around at the area. A massive chasm spanned to the east of the stronghold, filled with vile, fel-green sludge that burst into similarly colored flames. To the south were a series of massive craters, each easily a full grown dragon in diameter. They looked like impact craters... or maybe footsteps. A few times I had to shout out 'Flame!', and that was all the warning we had to jump away from our location before an enormous pillar of fire burst out of the ground. Slowly but surely, though, we approached Honor Hold, where a dwarven guard halted our approach.

"State yer name and business entering Honor Hold."

"I am Aruen, and these are my companions, Orande, Ian, and Elizabeth. We are tracking a mage in the service of the Burning Legion to Shadowmoon Valley, and we need mounts that can swiftly travel along Outland's less than ideal terrain.

"Hmm, Aruen, Aruen. Remind me where I've heard that name before?"

"I am the lead Paladin of the Liberality Confederacy. Now, may I ask, who is in charge around here?"

The guard scratched where his chin would have been, had it not been buried under plate. "That'll by Commander Nighthawk. Can't miss him. He should be in the keep right now, if I'm not mistaken." The guard saluted. "Light watch over ye," he said, and returned to his post, not waiting for us to return the blessing.

The four of us entered under the archway, when my ears picked up a little noise. "Flame!" I shouted, before diving out of the way with Amanthe in my arms. Just as I'd expected, a pillar of fire erupted from where we'd been, scorching my robes. I quickly smoothed them out, patting out the tiny blazes that had formed. I could shapeshift the burns away later, when we were out of sight. We regrouped around the night elf, and she led us into the keep. We turned corners, walked up stairs, up ramps, I removed the burns on my violet robes with a brief spell of shapeshifting, and finally, we arrived in the keep's largest room, no doubt the command post, where the leaders gathered.

The guards at the door gave us no trouble; it only took a flare of fel-green behind the demon hunter's blindfold to make them let us through.

The interior was... impressive. Maps of Hellfire and several other of Outland's regions had completely engulfed the walls, and up the ramp, around a table, stood several mortals; a human female, a draenei male, and a night elf male. Which of these was Commander Nighthawk was _more_ than obvious.

The night elf wasn't largely built, not even by mortal standards, but he loomed. Even here within the confines of the Keep, he wore heavy plate armor, and two giant, double-handed spiked maces hung from his back. I snarled when I saw the dagger hanging from his belt; that was a fang from a dragon. A Bronze dragon, I deduced from the faint tint adorning it.

Aruen cleared his throat as we entered, and I found a seat for Amanthe, who gladly took it and curled up. The rest of us, however, gathered around Commander Nighthawk as Aruen explained our situation to him, me struggling not to tear that dagger from his belt and slit the Commander's throat with it. It had happened, of course, on occasion that a dragon would willingly remove one of their fangs to give to a mortal they favored, but _like hells_ that was going to be the case here. Our kind gave up our fangs for one in a million mortals, and that's with _very_ generous rounding.

"I understand your predicament," Nighthawk said. "And fortunately for you, we have no shortage of mounts. That's not to say we have much of a surplus, though. Two is all I can spare; that should be enough for the four of you. Unless you need some of our soldiers accompanying you?"

"Great," came Amanthe's weary voice from behind us. "The sooner we can go, the better. That gnome's getting further away every second. Sooner we can ride after him, the better."

Aruen nodded. "Elizabeth is correct. I would appreciate if we could have these mounts post haste. The sooner we can get the apprentice, the sooner you can have them back. But no, we do not need any soldiers helping us. This is a tactical strike mission, so taking too many people would make it more difficult to travel. We'll be as quick as possible, but keep your men here in case the Legion attacks. Especially with the Dark Portal unguarded."

"That's good. Go speak with Stablemaster Starns. Tell him I sent you, he'll get you your horses faster than you can say his name if he knows I sent you. In fact..." I looked back at the walls filled with maps, and took off a strip of paper, and fished out a pen from his armor (Who keeps a pen in their armor?) and scribbled some writing on the paper, before leaving a signature. He handed it to Aruen. "There. This'll keep him from saying you're lying about getting sent by me."

Aruen bowed, then took the slip. "Thank you, Commander Nighthawk. Your aid is most appreciated. I can only hope the rest of our journey will be so smooth."

He nodded. "Yes, indeed. I'd warn you; reports from Shadowmoon say that place has become a warzone. You really, _really_ want to stop that mage before he gets to Shadowmoon. If not, well... Elune watch over you."

When we turned around, me carrying Amanthe again, I allowed myself to fully snarl. "Wretched night elf... dragon fang dagger... out to give him a few of _my_ fangs..."

"Oh, let it go, drake," said the night elf with us curiously.

"Oh yes, just let it go. Pay no mind to the fact that he's killed one of my kind and proudly sports their teeth as a weapon."

"What are you going to do? We need his help to catch up to that apprentice. Separating his head from his body as you want to will, bear with me here, not help with that."

"I'm going to kill him when we catch that apprentice," I muttered to myself in Draconic as we left the keep. "I swear I will."

"You do that, Ialion," said Amanthe from where I carried her.

"You will do no such thing, drake," the night elf insisted calmly, glaring at me with the slightest hint of felfire behind her blindfold. "Understood?"

I sighed in defeat. "Only as long as you aren't looking. Beyond that, no promises."

Within an hour, we rode on two horses over the plains of Hellfire, and to my chagrin, nearly twice as fast as I could've flown, with Outland's conditions. I suppressed a scowl as I rode with Amanthe at my back. Being outpaced by _horses._ I tried to speak reason to myself, that these horses were used to Outland, and didn't have to deal with the nether-winds, but that did little to soothe my injured pride.

But we were clearing ground fast. If all went correctly, we'd reach Terokkar Forest within six hours at this pace. Much better than the ten or so hours it took me to fly to Honor Hold. I didn't want to imagine how hard getting these mounts would have been without the natural authority the Kingslayers had from saving the world Titans-know how many times.

Watch out, Whirlgo Fritzsprocket. We're coming for you...

* * *

><p><span>Whirlgo Fritzsprocket<span>

"Damn it, damn it, damn it!" I shouted in my mind as my feet flew over the ground, jumping over brambles larger than my head and sharper than a gryphon's beak. I glanced back, and cursed when I realised my pursuers had not relented.

The insectoid ravagers apparently had never heard of 'giving up'. The half-dozen... well... _outlandish_ creatures had been chasing me ever since my mount had un-summoned itself. The ravagers seemed to be getting closer. Better fix _that._ I drew frost magic into my veins, stopped, and gazed at them, waiting. The moment before they were within pouncing range of me, I thrust both hands up, the frost magic exploding outwards from me. The animals hissed and clacked their mandibles at me when thick ice formed around each of their feet, rooting them to the ground. I concentrated, and reached out towards the ice, feeling its essence, and cast one of the spells the Ice King had taught me.

The prisons of ice each shattered, the magical ice returning to me and whirling around me rapidly, forming a cutting barrier. I launched myself at the ravagers, and let the miniature arctic hurricane rip and tear at the ravagers, which howled in pain as the icicles pierced their armored hides and sliced the flesh beneath. Once the magic for sustaining the spell let up, I called up my magic again, darker magic this time. Shadows pooled around my hands, and I let loose a shadow nova, the sinister energies blasting back the ravagers within its not-inconsiderable radius, sending them flying. Some broke their backs on a stone wall and were paralyzed, others were impaled on brambles. They twitched and thrashed a few times, then went still.

All but one perished, the obvious bull of the group, standing twice as tall as its companions, oozing blood from multiple cuts inflicted by my whirlwind of ice. It shrieked in fury at their deaths, and charged at me.

I gasped in pain as one of its barbed legs lashed at me, leaving a long but thin gash in my right side, and then blinked behind it. I spun around while the ravager was still wondering where I'd gone, slamming a hand forward. A whirlwind exploded from my hands, capturing the ravager in its core. The cone of cold howled once, then tossed the ravager over the nearby cliff. For a moment it hung on with two legs, then I hurled a frostbolt at its head, prompting it to release and fall down into the void below.

With that taken care of, I spared a moment to assess my condition.

Other than a few bruises from tripping over my own clumsy feet, and that gash left by the ravager, I was fine. A quick fire spell made sure the cut wouldn't get infected while it healed, and I was on my way again, now channeling shadow energies into my legs to multiply their endurance and speed.

What I wouldn't give for a felsteed again. The Legion had given it to me after I got to Hellfire, but they'd neglected to mention it would leave me the moment I left the place. Oh well. At least I got off my feet for a little bit while the demonic horse crossed the plains of Hellfire. But now that time was over, and once again, I sped towards my masters in Shadowmoon Valley, eager to receive their draenic relic.

Why they _wanted_ the damned thing in the first place was beyond me. All it did was project a pretty hologram of a draenei and naaru talking. Clearly not worth all this trouble. Maybe they just wanted to lord it over the draenei, as a childish _'nyah nyah we've got your stuff'._ I shoved the thought from my head right away. The Burning Legion is not _childish._ Whatever reason they had for me delivering this, it was a good reason, which they clearly saw as on a need to know basis. Maybe they didn't trust me; I wouldn't trust me either, seeing as how recently they recruited me, and the reasons. Power beyond my wildest dreams. A ticket off Azeroth when they burned it at long last, a place within the Legion's mortal recruits. What person in their right mind _wouldn't_ join up? And of course, what recruiter in their right mind wouldn't suspect me of double-crossing?

I passed the last of the brambles behind me, _finally._ Now I entered Terokkar Forest in earnest, and what a sight it was.

A heavy tree layer that only permitted me to look at the sky through the tiniest windows, supplying me with light in the form of luminescent seed-bearing cones. A few rivulets wound through the forest, sparkling with the silver light given to them by the trees. The chirping of birds filled the air to saturation, as did the buzzing of several insects.

_Chirp, chirp, chirp._

_Chi-i-i-i-i-i-irp._

_Chirp-chirp, chirp, chirp-chirp._

_Bra-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-ak!_

But as much as I would've loved to stay and tour the region, I had a mission to do, and I'd bet my left hand the Legion wasn't patient. They wanted results, nevermind how much pain and exhaustion it caused, and who was I to argue?

For a moment a tiny, tiny bit of me wondered if maybe this was a mistake, but then the rest of my mind shouted at that portion to _shut up_, that this is the best choice for me.

I kept running, nowhere near as fast as a felsteed, but faster than I could've under purely my own power, of course. At least until I encountered a patrol of... what were they called? Aboroa-somethings. Bird-men, one wearing a feathered headdress in addition to its vibrant red and blue plumage, probably feathers it had shed over life. A half dozen of them stood around that one, carrying various staffs, spears, and wooden bird statues in their hands, heading, thank Sargeras, away from me.

I skidded behind a tree, out of their sight. I could've easily ran around them, but I wanted to try a spell that the Ice King had taught me, one I'd never gotten the chance to try out in actual combat.

Icy talons ran under my skin, and I came out from behind the tree, still unnoticed by the bird-men. I punched the ground with my left hand, and focused my magic towards the bird-man with the headdress.

An icicle the size of a tauren impaled upwards into the bird-man, and he (I think it's a he.) only squawked once before falling silent as I destroyed his spine, his friends squawking and grabbing their weapons, looking about for their attacker. One of them saw me, and pointed a spear in my direction squawking in a different tone of voice to the others.

But it was too late. That was only the first part of the spell, and I grunted, drawing on a lot of my mana pool to finish the spell I oh-so desperately wanted to try out. I drew my hand up, held it to my face, and clenched.

The icicle still impaled into the bird-man formed an icy core around his heart, and then it just _unleashed._ Enormous spikes of ice exploded out and retracted back into the bird-man, stabbing his escorts repeatedly in the arm, the chest, sometimes the neck. They screeched, blood exploding from them in rivers for nearly ten seconds, before they all fell to the ground, silent and riddled with holes, and I relaxed my fist, letting it fall to my side.

"Now_ that's_ what I'm talking about!" I cackled.

The original icicle remained, but the bird-man that had been the center of the icy explosions was thoroughly mangled, only a few scraps of meat around an orb of ice covered in sharp protrusions perched atop the icicle, dripping and oozing various bodily fluids onto the ground, flowing around the icicle and staining the blue ice purple.

I almost gagged at the stench of blood and gore, then caught myself. The Burning Legion does not loose its stomach at the sight of a little blood... and some intestines... and is that a brain stem?

I shook my entire body, and reached deep into the Twisting Nether, letting its arcane energy flow through me in thick, invigorating torrents. That spell, as _awesome_ as it was, took a lot of my mana.

Once I was done evocating, I channeled more dark magic into my legs, and sprinted, my shoes only stepping in blood for a moment before I left the scene of gore behind, sprinting towards the Allerian Stronghold. I'd need to stop and sleep soon, though...

* * *

><p><span>Ialion<span>

One of the ravagers dared to look my way, and I responded by hissing at it as the horses trotted through, carefully to avoid the brambles. The ravager retreated, moments before we passed it. The ravagers had probably never even met a dragon before, but by letting my draconic scent strengthen even through my mortal form, they got the message; Don't mess with these ones.

Luckily, in the six hours it took us to get here, Amanthe had gotten better enough to sit up straight behind me. Now the two of us chatted lightly about what we would do with the apprentice _when_ we caught up to him, which seemed fairly unavoidable now that Aruen scried mid-trip that he was not even halfway through Terokkar, halfway towards the Allerian Stronghold, and we were gaining ground fast.

"I think that we should knock him out, then find out how corrupt he is," I said. "No sense in killing him if he can be saved, Amanthe."

She grunted a bit as her headache throbbed, but managed to keep her thoughts cohesive. "If he got corrupted by the Legion, who's to say we _can_ save him? And besides, you know how quickly demonic corruption progresses." I sighed. She had a point there; Demonic corruption progresses and entrenches itself into the victim's soul quickly, but could be stopped if you caught it in early stages. Old God corruption went relatively slowly, but was much harder to stop even in its early stages.

"We have to at least _try_ to save him. I know that if he's too corrupt there's nothing we can do, but on the off chance he's not, we should try to uncorrupt him."

"I think that would be a waste of time. The demons got to him once before; who's to say they won't again?"

"Amanthe, by that logic it's not worth saving _anyone_, because they 'might' be corrupted again." She had no response to that. "Look, I'm not saying we should just go and spare him. I'm saying that we should just follow the standard procedure when trying to uncorrupt an individual. Find out how far along they are, and if they can still be saved, we shut off anything their corrupter can use to continue the process, burn the corruption from their soul, and then wait while their soul heals."

"Alright, we'll do it that way. I still say that he's a lost cause. If not now, then by the time we catch up to him for sure."

"Maybe, but we can't just assume that. But we're tired, anyway. I don't know about you, but the last time I slept was back in Duskwood. I'm gonna take a little nap, please keep me from falling off and getting impaled on a bramble."

I felt her pat my back. "I'll do that, Ialion."

"Thanks." With that, I closed my eyes, and began to sink into sleep. "Soon as I'm up, I'll let you get some sleep too."

Soon, I began to get detached from my body. I went through moments where I couldn't feel my body, even though they ended the moment I noticed them. The numbness flashes occurred more often and lasted longer, and soon I was shaken to sleep by the horse's trotting.

I woke up a moment later, being shaken by Amanthe.

"Ungh, wah what?"

"We're stopping for the night. We've reached Terokkar, and... wow. You should take a look at this."

I sat up, realizing I wasn't on the horse anymore, but rather on solid ground. "How long have I been asleep?"

"Not too long. Come on, get up." Obeying her, I got to my feet, looking about Terokkar Forest, trying to find what Amanthe wanted me to see...

"Amanthe, why do I smell blood?" I inquired her. A lot of blood had returned to her face, so she must've been getting used to her headache both mentally and physically.

"Because there's a lot of blood where we arrived, drake," came the night elf's enthusiastic voice. "Come here, what do you make of this?"

I turned to where her voice came, and saw the night elf and Aruen both standing around a pile of corpses, centered on the strangest, bloodiest, and most out of place icicle I'd ever seen. Were those _birds?_

"Never seen any birds like _those_ before. Why is this so important?" I asked.

"The arakkoa," began our Paladin. "Are a race of bird-like humanoids native to Outland. Tribal, shamanastic. The region is named Terokkar after Terokk, their god. Something, or somethings, just took out six of them."

I stepped forward, looking at the icicle covered in scraps out meat. "Well, looks like a frost mage did this. See these scraps of meat? Looks like this icicle impaled one of these things and then, well, kind of exploded." I picked off a scrap of meat, and set it aside to eat after I was done with this.

Amanthe arrived next to me. "It's the apprentice, it's got to be. This looks like a very powerful ice spell, and the Ice King teaches his apprentices powerful things. By the Light, look at this, he really did a number on them. Ialion, can you shift into the twilight realm for a moment, confirm if the apprentice has been through here?"

I nodded. "Right away." I began pulling twilight energy around myself, shaking and groaning from the effort.

The demon hunter continued to speak. "Your kind can track people through the twilight realm?" she asked in a furious tone of voice that made me lose my concentration and have to start over.

Amanthe spared me having to answer. "Not people. Corruption. And since the apprentice is corrupted, he'll be able to see if he's been through the area recently."

Finally, I opened the twilight portal, and vanished into it. The trees vanished, the blood vanished, as did the bodies. All the remained was the spiky icicle. And, sure enough, a faint red mist passed through in a more or less straight line from Hellfire, moving behind a tree at one point, then out from behind it, then forward again. I walked back into the twilight portal, and was kicked into the physical realm. I turned around and placed a hand on the twilight portal, and went through the procedure to close it.

"Alright," I said, breathing heavily with the effort of opening and closing a portal. "That confirms it. This is, without a doubt, the apprentice's work. Damn, he really did a number on these humanoids, didn't he?" I asked, shifting to my true form. I pulled one of the scraps of meat off the icicle, making the others groan in disgust, and swallowed it.

"Err, right," said Aruen as I continued to eat. "How close do you think he is?"

"Hard to tell," I said, swallowing another chunk of meat. Fresh, bloody, raw. A bit chewy, though, with a metallic taste not from the blood. "I don't know how fast the meat of these things rots, so I can't figure it out from that. The icicle's magical, so it could still be there on the return journey. And the corruption trail in the twilight realm, yes, it's faint, but I don't know how corrupt the apprentice himself _is._ It could've been an hour ago, it could've been a day ago. Just can't tell."

"Actually," said Amanthe. "We can. Ialion, you're the carnivore here. How long do you think it takes animals to start tearing apart a kill like this?"

I licked some blood off my fangs. "Oh, I don't know. Less than an hour, usually. Although whenever there's magic involved, they stay away for at least another ten hours, since it usually takes that long for the residue to fade away. Magical residue's better at warding away animals than fire, see." My pupils briefly slitted in understanding, making my sight dim for a moment. "Oooh, I get it. So he's less than half a day from us."

The night elf nodded. "Excellent. And he has to sleep as well. So we sleep tonight, then set out first thing when we wake up after him. I don't even think he knows we're after him. Makes it easier for us."

I nodded, and continued to eat the arakkoa, stopping sometimes to remove their clothing or feathers, much to the disgust of the others, who set about preparing their camp, and eating some of the supplies they'd brought along.

By the time I'd finished cleaning the area of anything edible, besides _us_, they had a nice little camp set up. Fire to ward off animals, which they genuinely feared, especially living in a forest. I crawled close to the fire and sank my stomach onto the ground, Amanthe leaning against my flank as I did. I closed my eyes, and once again sank into sleep.

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<strong>


	16. Chapter 16:Not Enough

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Thanks to dharak for being my beta.**

**Chapter published 7/27/12**

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><p><span>Ialion<span>

As it turns out, the Arakkoa do not take kindly to people in 'their' forest. Whenever our horses passed some, they squawked angrily and tried to chase us, but soon gave up when they realized they had no chance of catching up to us. They posed no threat to us. And so we rode on. And on. And on... and _on._

"Are we even going the right way?" I shouted to Aruen, riding with the night elf at his back, right next to us.

"The roads are much safer. If the apprentice is intending to get to Shadowmoon, he will not risk being killed by wildlife just to shorten his journey."

"I kinda doubt that! You saw what he did to those Arakkoa. I think he can handle a few animals."

"All the same, it's not even that much time off to stray off the roads, seeing as how the entrance into Shadowmoon is constricted by mountains."

I nodded, Amanthe leaning against my back. She was rapidly getting used to her headache, but still suffering. "Alright, good. So you're saying he'll want to stick to the roads because the benefit of straying doesn't outweigh the risk."

"That is exactly what I am saying. If we do not catch him before he reached the Allerian Stronghold, we can get better mounts there. We can get nether rays. I've ridden them before, and let me tell you, they are _extremely _rapid flyers. Not agile, but fast, which is what we need."

"Great, more things that can travel faster than I can," I grumbled.

"Let it go, drake," the night elf complained excitedly. "You're not used to Outland's conditions, and they are, so stop whining."

"They're _prey._ Prey shouldn't be able to outrun the predator." The moment I said that, I realized how stupid that was. Of course some had to outrun predators, or all the prey would die out. But even then...

"We should be getting close," Amanthe said, groaning from behind me. "We've been traveling like this for hours, and he's on foot. If what you said is true, Ialion, his corruption trail is at ground level."

"If he's on foot, he's the fastest runner I've ever seen, Amanthe," the night elf growled.

"Meh, there are spells to speed yourself up. Not enough to outrun horses, though, not for any length of time. We'll catch up to him, it's only a matter of time. He's not far, I can feel it."

And so we continued to ride, the horses' hooves clopping along the stone path like a thunderstorm. They showed no signs of exhaustion, typical of a war horse bred for such conditions over... centuries. Maybe millennia. Trees with glowing cones flew past us, tiny rivulets vanished into distance in moments. After several long, long hours, we reached the Allerian Stronghold at sunset.

And what a stronghold it was. Not quite as impressive as Honor Hold, but still quite impressive. Towers with archers and sharpshooters lined the walls, who I saw shifted their sights to us as we approached, then relaxed when they saw the insignia of Honor Hold on the horses' armor. We rode in with ease, and dismounted from the horses. Some conversation with the local commander later, the mortals here had agreed to send the horses back to Honor Hold, and we set about looking for the Sha'atari Skyguard.

"Can't be too hard, right?" I asked myself.

* * *

><p><span>Amanthe<span>

"Where is the blasted Skyguard?" I hissed.

"I don't know!" Orande whispered. "I've never been in the Allerian Stronghold before, how should I know?"

We'd been searching for an hour, but found nothing in the way of the Skyguard. The forge, the inn, the gryphon master. But no organization with nether ray mounts.

"We should separate," I said. "Cover more ground that way."

"Right," Ialion quipped. "I'll go this way," he said, pointing towards the enormous, churning water wheel at the foot of the nearby mountain. "See you guys later." With that, the disguised dragon took off, and a few moments later, so did the rest of us.

I searched high and low, but the Skyguard didn't appear. Were they even in the Stronghold at all? I must've searched an hour, only occasionally running into Ialion, Orande, or Aruen**. **That was when I noticed a commotion coming from the center of the Allerian Stronghold. The soldiers that patrolled the area clustered around a courtyard, as did several civilians. I pushed my way through, and was greeted with Orande holding out a hand that flickered with fel green energy, a bored expression on her face.

The guards formed a ring around her, and I spotted Aruen and Ialion also watching her. No, not her. Her captive.

Across from her was a gnome man, with sky blue hair and a mustache the same color. He wore standard Dalaran mage robes, and floated in the air. He was struggling against the green and black sphere around him, connected to Orande's outstretched hand by a flickering tether of green and black lightning.

"Orande?" I asked. "Who is that?"

"This would be our apprentice. I'll tell you how I caught him later, but this _is_ Whirlgo Fritzsprocket."

The gnome continued to struggle. "Let me go, you little - "

"Oh, hush. You're not going anywhere, not until we get back the relic you stole," Orande continued, happy. The guards looked at each other, confused. No doubt they had thought Orande just randomly assaulted Whirlgo, but now this new information made things harder for them. The rest of us joined up with Orande.

"Night elf," said Ialion, moving next to the still hovering gnome. "Can you let him go? We'll restrain him, and we can begin uncorrupting him."

"Gladly. This isn't as easy as it looks." Orande lowered her hand, the magic dissipating into the air. Whirlgo fell to the ground, panting, and Ialion grabbed him.

"Alright, now lets - "

He was cut off by a roar. An enormous shadow nova blasted Ialion back into the ring of soldiers. I knew he'd be fine; that was shadow magic, after all, and he didn't hit his head. The blinding flash of magic cut off just before it reached me, and when it subsided we saw the apprentice in the middle of a field of scorched earth, cackling, black mist swirling around his hands and a shadowy barrier around him.

"How convenient," he said, green eyes blazing with malice. He thrust out his left hand, and a pitch black beam shot out into Orande. She screamed and fell to her knees, black fog swirling around her. A dozen of the soldiers charged Whirlgo, but were knocked back as his shadow barrier pulsed. Finally, he let go of the beam, and ran in the other direction, people parting before him for fear of his wrath.

"Ialion, get him!"

The drake, having recovered from the shadow nova, nodded at me, indigo energy swirling around him as he shifted. "Got it!" he said, now in his true form, taking wing.

Meanwhile Orande was still covered in black mist. Aruen and I both approached her, the draenei shouting at her over the commotion of the crowd, soldiers surrounding us, and citizens running away. "Orande! Orande, fight it. Whatever he did, fight it!" I lit up my hands with holy magic, trying to dispel whatever was happening, but failed miserably. Orande looked up and opened her mouth, a shadowbolt shooting out of her mouth and landing where Whirlgo had stood. The black mist faded, and she stood up, taking out her warglaives.

"Orande, what in the name of the Light was that?"

"That was just the beginning," she said calmly as the soldiers around us backed away, focused on where the shadow bolt had landed. The place ir had hit seethed and bubbled with darkness, expanding outwards along the ground. It stopped, and began rising up, a liquid mass of darkness forming four legs, a torso, tail...

"Orande..." Aruen said, looking up at the being rising infront of us, taking out his hammer. I shifted into the shadows.

"As part of demon hunter training, we were instructed to bind our souls to a demon to make us stronger, or rather, to capture the soul of a demon within us. After I joined the Liberality Confederacy and became stronger with time, I replaced the currently captured demon with a stronger one, again and again, until..."

The mass of shadows stopped shifting, and their colors solidified. It was a massive, green reptilian form, with four legs and two arms, like a dragonspawn blown up into insane proportions. Two tiny wings sprouted from its back, with red webbing. It wore two red, spiked shoulderpads, and had a colossal breastplate over its stomach, hanging from its neck with heavy chains. Its eyes were on green fire, its mouth filled with razor sharp fangs, and in its hands it held an enormous, two-bladed sword. Fel flames briefly ran along the weapon, but then died out. It panted, one hand over its breastplate, the other stabbing its weapon into the ground.

"You had... a fucking _pit lord_ in you... _and you didn't tell us?_" I hissed.

"I didn't think it would ever get out! Damn it, my poison does nothing against a pit lord. Help me kill it!"

"Ha ha ha! _How?_"

Orande flicked her warglaives, fel flame running along it. "Um... give me a moment," she hissed.

At this time, the enormous demon took its hand off its breastplate, and looked at Orande. "_You,_" it growled, and charged. We scattered out of the way as it swung the enormous weapon down, cracking the earth where Orande had been an instant earlier, the shockwave knocking us off our feet. I practically shouted a word of pain onto the demon, then wove a plague onto it, and began calling up the magic for twilight fireballs. He pulled his weapon out of the ground just as the first of my fireballs slammed into his face. He seemed more irritated than anything by my attack, and stabbed the weapon at me.

I didn't have time to dodge, but I did have enough time to disperse into shadows. The weapon disrupted the cloud of darkness that was me, before pulling away to swing at Orande, who simply jumped over it. She ran at the pit lord and slashed its armor with her glaives. Sparks rained off the armor, but the felflames left a few gashes in it. But given how thick the plate must've been, it might as well have been a scratch.

A dozen gunshots rang through the air, coming from the defenders in a circle around the cornered demon, and just as many spots opened up on its unarmored flank, oozing green blood. The pit lord snarled in pain, and swung its weapon in a massive arc, holding it by one end to allow it maximum range. One or two of the guards managed to duck below the swing, as did Aruen and Orande, and I still wasn't materialized, but the others... Light, so much blood...

I came back into being, and fired a twilight pyroblast at him. The enormous spell caught him in the chest, but simply rolled off the breastplate. I growled. Wonderful.

The pit lord stabbed its weapon at Orande, and she dodged out of the way, slicing her warglaives at his armor, or at the handle of his weapon. I continued to pelt the pit lord with life-siphoning plagues and twilight fire, and Aruen also chipped in with light blasts of holy magic. She was fast, and avoided all the hits, but if just one connected...

One did connect. With a grunt, the demon swung his sword at Orande, catching her with the flat of it and sending her high up into the air, flailing as she fell. I gasped and wove a levitation around her, and a flash of light from Aruen healed her wounds, letting her descend out of range safely.

Unfortunately, this let the pit lord focus on the next threat; me.

I gasped, throwing one last fireball at its face, which it blocked by raising a hand to catch the fireball in. It exploded, of course, but did nothing to the pit lord's thick skin. I expected it to slash at me with the blade, but I didn't expect it to whisper a single word in demonic and turn to Aruen.

I sighed in relief and began to cast another fireball, when something bright fell on me and **-**

_IT BURNS!_

I screamed as another fireball rained from the sky on me, and another, before I finally raised a shield around myself and sprinted out of the way. I cursed, and whispered a renew onto myself, feeling the burns diminish as I left the rain of fire's area, the crashes reverberating like a cannon and filling the air with smoke, luckily blowing away from me.

More guards opened fire at the pit lord, but they may as well have been tickling it. Other spells flew through the air as the Stronghold's magic users joined the fray; a shadow bolt, a volley of arcane missiles. The pit lord swung its massive blade at Aruen, catching him in the side. He grunted, his armor deflecting much of the damage but denting horribly, in time for the pit lord to raise its sword and stab it down at him, only for it to be deflected by a dense shield of magic light he'd woven around himself in the last second.

Orande came flying into the fray, leaping up an impossible height and landing on the pit lord's sword, grabbing it with one hand, both warglaives in her right. The demon swung its weapon up, dislodging the demon hunter.

It turned out this was exactly what she wanted. While in the air, pure red flames surrounded her in a ball, and she fell onto the pit lord like a comet, releasing a shockwave out from where she landed on his head, grabbing onto a horn. She raised her warglaives and stabbed them into the top of his head, but only part way. Then she let go, falling down and jumping off to get distance.

Shadows throbbed and pulsed around the spot she'd impaled her warglaives, and the pit lord howled**. **The sound was a deafening, glass-shattering roar that made it impossible for me to grip my magic, as the shout continued to shake my insides several seconds after it ended.

The demon lowered his hands and stomped his forelegs a few times, before throwing his hands up. Seemingly out of nowhere, an infernal fell into the ground behind Orande, who whirled around with a single fluid motion and knocked it away from her with a blast of shadow. I fell on it, casting more spells while she kept the pit lord's attention, and I wasn't alone. Bullets and other spells rained down on the infernal, which staggered back in pain until it finally fell apart into stones before it even took its first swing.

The back of my neck tingled, and I threw myself to the ground, the pit lord's double-bladed sword swinging through the air where my head had been in just a moment before. Orande swung her war glaives, and the demon parried the strike with the handle of his own weapon, making her weapons stick. A look of joy crossed Orande's face, only for an instant before the pit lord swung his weapon up, taking Orande with it and dislodging her weapons. She twisted around and landed on his back, just to the side of the narrow river of flames running down his spine, and stabbed the point of her warglaives left and right of the row of fire.

The demon roared again, and those spots also began crawling with shadows, in addition to his head. Orande jumped off and ran over to me while the demon staggered, stunned from whatever she'd done.

"I need to stab it one more time before I can absorb it again. In its chest."

"The breastplate - " I pointed out.

"Needs to come off."

I nodded. "Right. You and Aruen keep it distracted."

Unfortunately, the pit lord heard this, and it was only through Orande diving into me and pushing me aside that we avoided the tauren-sized fel-fireball he belched out at us. I aimed a twilight fireball at the left chain holding up the breastplate, but a thick, solid orb of shadow magic had formed over both chains, now that the pit lord had overheard our plan. My fireball slammed into the shadow shield, and bounced off, hitting Aruen in the chest and sending him to the ground. I winced, and quickly cast a renew on him, then shifted back into my shadowform.

The pit lord had gone berserk, hearing that Orande intended to absorb him again, however she meant to do _that_. He swung his sword in enormous arcs, summoned torrential rains of fire from the heavens, and there was always at least one infernal running around causing havoc before the soldiers subdued it. Aruen ducked below a wide swing of its blade, which came back, prompting another draenei to jump back. The pit lord raised the weapon high over his shadow-ensnared head and slammed it down at Orande. She raised her right warglaive up, glowing with felflame, to block the strike. The attack should have pulverized her, but she stopped it like it was swung by a child. She pulled out her warglaive and leapt at the demon, grabbing onto its breast plate and climbing up. She was about to slash her weapons at the right chain when a massive hand closed around her, pulling her away.

Before the demon could even _think_ about squeezing, I nailed it with a twilight pyroblast in the eyes, making it roar and let Orande go, stumbling back. A ball of green lightning also slammed into his head, and he took another deep breath, and let loose a deafening roar. The ground shook, and I lost my grip on my magic. The pit lord swung around and raised the hand that previously held Orande, shadows pooling inside. He thrust out his hand at me, and an enormous, spiked black crystal shot at me. Still shaken from the roar, I knew I couldn't move to avoid this. I closed my eyes. This was going to hurt...

"Oof!" I opened my eyes when I heard the sound to see Ialion stumbling back on his hind legs, before falling on his back. He rolled over, and jumped at me.

"Ialion, you - "

"Took that shadow blast? Why, yes, yes I did. I'm not nearly as squishy as you are." He got between the pit lord and I, flaring out his wings to absorb another shadow blast with another _oof!_ "Climb on, damn it!" I obeyed, and Ialion took off, us circling the pit lord.

"We need to take off the breastplate, but there's magic protecting the chains. We can't get at them."

Ialion winged out of the way of a fireball, nearly making me loose my grip on his neck. "Well, start attacking them! The protective magic can't last forever, can it? I'll keep you safe, just attack!" With that, I resumed my assault, shooting fireballs at the shadowy armor around the chains. The appearance of a dragon, even a Twilight one, on their side renewed the defenders' vigor, and bullets, arrows, and spells fell upon the pit lord like hail. Aruen's hands glowed with holy light, healing the burn wounds people sustained from the occasional fiery rain, Ialion spat his own fireballs in conjunction with mine, and Orande herself went toe to toe with the demon, dancing around its strikes with renewed confidence. There was a massive _thud_, and a cannonball struck the demon's breastplate

"The chains!" I shouted for anyone that could hear. "Go for the chains!"

Try as the pit lord might, it couldn't block all the attacks descending upon its left chain. Slowly but surely, the magic faltered, and the left chain was left vulnerable, where another cannon blast shattered it. The pit lord roared in... fear? He clasped the hand not holding his sword on the broken chain, trying to keep his armor balanced. He continued to swing his blade, and summon rains of fire and infernals, but it was clear that it was over. We broke one chain; the other would be easy.

"No... NOOOOO!" he shouted as we broke the other chain, and the breastplate fell down with a _clang_, revealing an exposed, yellow underbelly. Quick as a gazelle, Orande leaped at the chance, only to be swept aside by a demonic fist, landing next to Aruen. The demon stomped the ground as attacks continued to rain onto his underbelly, shadows swirling around him.

"Damn it!" Ialion shouted in Draconic, diving at Orande and Aruen. With a twist, he threw me off his back and set down, wrapping his wings around the three of us to shield us from the imminent attack.

_Boom!_

A flash of darkness. A swirl of purplish-black. Ialion flew off of us with a grunt, and when I looked back, I saw he'd managed to land on all fours, but he stumbled and fell to his forelegs, panting in pain.

The pit lord stumbled, and dropped its sword with a resounding _clang_. The other soldiers that had been attacking him were nowhere to be seen, and from the scorches on all the buildings facing the demon, I had an idea as to what happened to them. The demon took steps back, groaning, recovering from his last-resort shadow nova. Not wasting the chance the pit lord had accidentally given her, Orande sprinted at it full speed, shadows falling from where she stepped, and stabbed the point of both warglaives into the pit lord's underbelly. The spot began to ripple with shadows, making for four spots all covered in her dark magic: It's head, it's underbelly, and two spots on its back.

Orande ran back, and dropped both her warglaives, raising her hands. The pit lord recovered, and fixed her with a look of hatred. "No... I won't go back... I will not be torn from this pitiful world so soon! NOOOO!"

"We'll see," she said sweetly, and made like she was grabbing ropes with her hands. Sure enough, black, misty tethers erupted from all four spots on the pit lord's body and came into a single looped rope in Orande's hands. She tightened her grip and leaned back, digging her feet into the ground. Shadows pulsed along her body, across the ropes, and into the pit lord, which grunted and tried to step back.

The demon hunter dug her feet in and pulled harder, continuing to feed shadow magic into the demon. Shadows began to crawl along its skin, extinguishing the fire in its eyes. It roared and tried to free itself, but it shrunk, now only the size of a tree instead of a dragon. Orande's skin darkened and became leathery, bat like wings sprouting from her back and flapping. She groaned and pulled on the ropes harder, and the pit lord took a step forward. Black fog swirled around them both, light at the moment, but growing thicker with every passing second. Orande growled, and tugged harder, taking a step back that made the demon take a step forward. Her wings flapped harder, and the pit lord shrunk again, now the same size as Ialion. The ropes of darkness grew thicker, the black mist swirling around them thickened into swirling coils. With another grunt of effort, Orande pulled the pit lord, now feebly struggling against the chains of black fog around it. Everything else ceased to exist as Orande took control of the pit lord; we were entranced.

A miniature shadow nova enveloped Orande, and both the fog and the ropes thickened. With a roar of effort, she pulled the pit lord into a kneeling position before her. He was now as tall as a human and completely ensnared in shadows, leaving no trace of his colors. The ropes then shrank, and the night elf released another shadow nova, then another, and another, until she simply glowed with shadow energies, the wind from the blasts forcing Aruen and I to hold up a hand to shield our eyes. There was a final roar of rage, and then nothing.

The blinding light faded, and the wind died down. We uncovered our eyes and looked at the scene.

The pit lord was gone. Orande's skin was pitch black, with leathery wings sprouting from her back. She turned around, and the tattoo on her forehead glowed brilliant green, an even brighter green shining from behind her blindfold, now indistinguishable from her face. The glow faded, and her skin returned to normal, the wings disintegrating into nothing.

She bent over and picked up her warglaives. "Well, that was fun," she hissed, walking over to us, cracking her neck. Ialion returned to his human form. She looked around, taking in the devastation. "I suppose we'd better explain to them what that was."

"Yeah," I said. "That might help! Titans damn it, Orande! A _pit lord?_"

She shrugged. "Well, I slowly worked my way up, and, yeah. I got a pit lord. I've been planning to capture the soul of an eredar recently." I gave her an incredulous look. "Just be happy he was weakened from being inside me that whole time."

"_WEAKENED?_" Ialion screamed. "How did you beat it the first time?"

"I nearly didn't. Then again, I also had the soul of a shivarra inside me at the time, and when the gnome pulled him out of me, I had nothing. Oh look, it appears to be the commander of Allerian Stronghold." We turned around to see an elderly dwarf, with a gray beard and bald head, walking towards us in armor. He addressed Orande first.

"What did you do! I let you look for the Sha'atari Skyguard, and you invite a pit lord into my post?"

"I am terribly sorry, Commander Gneives, but the apprentice we needed the Sha'atari's help to capture was here. I cornered him, trapping him in magic, but when Ian asked me to lower the magic so he could apprehend the mage, he escaped and, in the process, summoned a pit lord. With the help of your soldiers, we managed to subdue and kill the demon." I noticed how she carefully avoided mentioning Whirlgo summoned the pit lord from her. When she was done, she turned to Ialion. "Ian, what did become of the apprentice?"

"I followed him, dodging some of his spells, and wouldn't you know it." He frowned. "I found the Sha'atari Skyguard. He stole a nether ray and escaped before I could stop him."

"Damn it," she cheered. "Commander, I am sorry for the damages the pit lord - "

"That's quite enough, lady," he interrupted her. "I've had enough problems with this post, what with the Arakkoa recovering their military strength. I don't care about why you did or did not cause _this,_" he said, motioning to the massive track of blackened land, already beginning to crawl with workers repairing it, stealing fleeting glances at the exchange. " - as long as it doesn't happen again."

Aruen stepped forward. "We are terribly sorry, Commander Gneives. We were only passing through, we shall take our leaves now, if it is alright with you."

"Yes, please! If this is what you people do just passing through someplace, I want you out all the sooner! You were looking for the Sha'atari. Well, go. You found them, now just _go._"

Aruen nodded. "Yes. We are terribly sorry for the damages done, Commander. If you need any help - "

"_No. _You've done enough!" he roared. "Just go."

"Right," I said, stumbling a bit as my headache flared. "Let's go. Ian, which way was the Skyguard?"

"This way," he said, walking off towards the waterwheel. "Follow me." We did, and once we were close enough to the wheel for its mist to conceal us, Ialion shifted to his true form.

"It would appear," he said as we wordlessly climbed on so he could bring us to them. "That you were wrong. The Skyguard has _not_ moved to the Stronghold." He took to the skies, flying up towards the mountains overlooking the Stronghold. "You see, I chased the apprentice here. He was blinking about, using some slow fall, and of course, throwing spells at me so I couldn't rip his arms off. He got to the Skyguard and stole one of their nether rays. I can't follow those, they're too fast. We need nether rays too."

Ialion reached a little protrusion of stone on the mountain, with glowing red crystals arranged in a ring to make a sort of landing track. He flapped his wings once, twice, and then landed in the middle of the ring, letting us dismount. Once I slid off, he cracked his back, and flared out his wings, making the few draenei around us take a step back to avoid getting hit.

A draenei woman approached him. "You again. I'm guessing you need to follow that gnome?"

Ialion nodded. "Yes. I'd go myself except, _damn_ but that nether ray was fast."

She chuckled, and pressed a finger against her purple goggles, sliding it up the bridge of her nose. "Yes, Su'rila was the fastest nether ray we had. It's a shame she was the one stolen."

I looked at Ialion. "Um... just _how_ much did you tell them?"

He swapped to Draconic. "About how we're helping those two track down a gnome corrupted by the Legion. Mentioning _them_ got them interested, and it looks like they've lived on Outland for a _long_ time. They didn't give a second glance to my color, so I bet they weren't around when Neltharion returned."

"You'd better hope that's the case! So, what happened when you tracked him here?"

"He bolted towards the nether rays beyond the bend there," he said, motioning down the track with his wing towards, sure enough, a place where the road bent around a river and mountainside. "Tried to stop him, as did the Skyguard, but he just hopped on a nether ray and took off. Must've been extremely tame, if it just let him on."

I nodded. "Alright." I turned back to the draenei, watching our exchange curiously. Wondering what conclusions they came to from me speaking in Draconic, I switched to Common. "Sounds like you already know the situation about the apprentice we're pursuing. Can you help us?"

She shook her head. "Like I said, Su'rila is our fastest nether ray. None of the others can keep up with her. Unless you can figure out a way to go faster, you won't be able to stop him."

I bit my lip. "Titans damn it! We have to at least try!" She was not saying this. She was _not_ saying this. We'd come so close! Ialion _literally_ had him in his grasp! And I'm supposed to believe we've lost him? I looked around. Orande was smiling, her green eye-sockets gently burning behind her blindfold. Ialion's human form seemed to share my sentiments, frowning and growling. Aruen... where was Aruen?

"She's right!" Ialion snarled before I could inquire as to the paladin's wherabouts. "We can't just give up! There's got to be something we can do! He's bringing something to the Legion, and they already stole something else from the draenei fifty-five years ago! They're related, and failure _just isn't_ an option!"

The Skyguard draenei shook her head, sending short brown hair flying. "I am sorry, but there is nothing more we can do. A teleportation spell would be too inaccurate, and there are no portals to anywhere in Shadowmoon. Besides, the Valley is a war zone. I do not know why, but the Legion is trying their best to keep anybody out. There is a wall of fel cannons overlooking the entire passage, and at least a dozen fel-reavers."

"They can't stop us!" I shouted, remembering the twilight realm. "They won't even know we've passed their border! And aren't there bases in Shadowmoon? A Horde base, and an Alliance base?"

"If they have survived this long, it would be a miracle. I know it is hard to simply give the Legion a victory, but I'm afraid there is nothing else we can do."

"Actually," said Aruen, reappearing around the bend Ialion had motioned towards earlier. He looked worn and tired, like someone had just taken away much of his life, and clouds of Light hung about him like mist. "There is something."

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><p><strong>Massive thanks to all the wonderful people who've read, reviewed, favorited, and alerted. I'm just amazed how far I've come with this story each day, and never would have dreamed about getting such a good reception to it. I'd expected maybe a third of the reviews this and Coup de What has by the time I ended the entire plot. But this? 'faints'.<strong>

**Review, let me know what you think.**


	17. Chapter 17:Moon's Shadow

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Thanks to my beta, dharak, for looking this over.**

**Chapter published 8/6/12**

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><p><span>Amanthe<span>

Orande was the first to raise her eyebrows. "Oh?" she asked politely. "And what would that be?"

"The Light provides answers to those who simply ask. While you were discussing, I went over to the nether ray pens and quickly meditated. I know what we need to do."

Ialion pounced at the opportunity. "Well? What is it then?"

"I have discerned the apprentice's future motions." Aruen's face twisted into something I'd yet to see from him, a scowl. "He is headed towards the Temple of Karabor. Once there, his motions will slow dramatically. Enough for us to catch up with him again."

The draenei who'd approached our group, letting the other members of the Skyguard return to their business milling about or planning what appeared to be flight routes, raised an eyebrow. "Alright, but how are you even going to enter Shadowmoon Valley in the first place, let alone reach the Temple?"

"Leave that to me, I know a way to sneak by the Legion," I said. "Anything else we need?"

Aruen rubbed his chin. "I do not know what the apprentice is doing in the Temple, but all the same we need to reach him as soon as possible. The Temple holds many relics of my people, ever since it was reclaimed from Illidan. If the Legion is sending one of their minions there... something dire is going to happen if we don't stop it. We need to depart," he said, a his voice filled with a tone of urgency and... panic?

The Skyguard nodded. "Alright. Follow me, I'll bring you to some nether rays." She paused and turned to me. "This method for sneaking by the Legion you have... what are its effects on animals?

I thought for a moment. "Nonexistent."

She nodded again. "Alright, good. Now follow me." She walked by us, leading us around the corner to an enormous clearing. A river flowed into a circular lake with an island at the middle. The Skyguard had apparently taken up residence here, if the vast number of nether rays and their keepers around the entire place was any indication. She led us over to a dirt ring with five nether rays tied down by ropes around them.

Up close, nether rays were much uglier than they were when looking at one flying afar. When a Kingslayer riding one had chased Selriona and I as we fled Stormwind, I hadn't gotten a good look at it. Now though, I had no problem taking in their entire appearance.

They resembled snakes, with tails that came apart into three parts, with feathery ends on two of them. Their heads were large and scaly, with a colorful band down the middle. One had a blue band, another green, and the last two had red bands. Their mouths were filled with wicked sharp fangs under beady, glowing eyes, like an insect close up. Underneath them their stomachs glowed, and a pale blue mist rose up past their sides. The green one snarled at me.

"Teril, _no_," the draenei scolded, pushing down on the nether ray's head. It whined once, and she turned to a wooden shed next to the dirt ring. She rummeged about in it for a moment, then emerged with four saddles and harnesses. She then went about putting them on the nether rays. Once the final ones were on, she turned to us.

"I have the authority to let you take these nether rays on important missions. This, without a doubt, qualifies as 'important'. If you need to discipline one of them, tap them in the gas sack on their underbelly. That's how we train them with negative reinforcement. To feed them, just give them meat. Any sort of meat will do, they're not picky." A mental image flashed behind my eyes, of one of those supremely fanged mouths ripping and tearing at my stomach. My stomach tingled, and I rubbed hand over it absentmindedly, trying to force the picture out of my head. She continued. "Just tug on the reins to steer them. Push down on their heads to tell them to go down." She stepped back. "Alright, come on."

Ialion turned to me, but I just fixed him with a glare that said _no, you are not flying on your own, because you won't be able to keep up with us. Now shut up and ride the damn nether ray. _With a sigh, he stepped forward to the blue nether ray. After some words from the Skyguard, it lowered itself as much as it could and Ialion climbed on, hooked himself into the harness, and nodded. The rest of us followed, with me getting the green one, and Aruen and Orande each getting a red.

The Skyguard looked at Aruen and Orande. "Land the nether rays outside of Shadowmoon, do whatever it is you need to to sneak past the Legion, then do what you need to. Return them when you're done. I don't need any more paperwork than giving you four these on the fly will already get me." She saluted us, and the two members of the Liberality Confederacy saluted back. I awkwardly did so, and Ialion just ignored it altogether.

With a shout, Orande and Aruen gave the command for their nether rays to take off. They zipped off infront of us, trailing that pale blue mist, and Ialion and I followed suit.

We tugged on the reins, urging the nether rays to go higher over the lid of the mountains, and then immediately down, towards Shadowmoon Valley.

Within minutes, wind flying by me and more than one bug crashing onto my face, Shadowmoon Valley came into view.

Its name was no misnomer. The land on the horizon was black as night with pits of what appeared to be _green lava. _Even from this distance, I could see an enormous mountain rising up in its middle with flickers of emerald light on its summit. But much worse was the border between Terokkar and Shadowmoon. She hadn't been kidding when she said the Legion was trying to keep people out; there was literally a _wall_ of what appeared to be cannons with faces, with hundreds of felguards patrolling behind them, extending in a row as far as I could see, completely sealing off Shadowmoon. How had they gotten that many forces into position without being stopped?

Aruen spoke up from beside us, shouting so we could hear him over the wind. "We need to land! Amanthe, we need to go down now! Can you hear me?"

I shouted back, screaming at the top of my lungs. "I hear you!" I took my left hand and placed it on the nether ray's green head and firmly pushed down. Immediately, it started to descend...

_...and kept going towards the line of cannons!_

The others followed my example, and it wasn't long before we were in their range. With a deafening _thwoomthwoomthwoom_, I saw a dozen fel-cannons belch fire at us.

"Down! Down!" I screamed. I summoned my magic as four of the fel-fireballs swerved towards me, raising a shield of light to keep them out. The first one missed us, swinging close enough that I felt its shadowflame scorching my shield. The second and third slammed into my shield off-center, and it held. The fourth one crashed into me dead-on, collapsing my shield. I looked over to the others; Orande and Aruen seemed to have also raised magical shields to protect themselves, but unlike mine, theirs still held. Ialion, I saw, had used his strength to... _push _the nether ray out of their paths. The nether rays shrieked and descended faster, but didn't appear to have the intellect to not continue approaching the cannons at the same time. Luckily there seemed to be a ridge of stone coming up. Once we were behind that, we'd be safe from the cannons.

_Thwoomthwoomthwoom!_ A second volley of cannonfire flew at us, and I could see some of the felguards jumping over the row of cannons and heading towards us, ready for when we landed. The second volley didn't manage to reach us before we descended behind the ridge, though, and crashed into the other side with a flash of green.

"Amanthe," Orande said angrily. "Do it!" She didn't need to tell me twice. Instantly I brought my magic up, twilight energy flickering around my hands. I flew through the spell as fast as I could, and opened a twilight portal, urging my nether ray in.

"Get in the portal!" I shouted, hearing the footsteps of approaching felguards. "_Get in the portal!_" My nether ray was the first to get in. The world flashed to black, then reappeared with a violet haze. The others followed suit, and the moment Aruen's nether ray appeared in the twilight realm I slammed the twilight portal shut before the Legion could enter. I breathed a sigh of relief. "Alright, we're good. We're all good. Nothing can hurt us in here."

I allowed myself to look around. The twilight realm here didn't look much different from the physical realm, except for the heavy purple fog, the mist and shadows curling about us, and the lack of trees in the direction we'd come form. I had my nether ray fly up, and smiled. No cannons. There was, instead, a wide streak of glowing red fog extending where the Legion had been in the physical realm, and shooting through and above it, the vivid line of red that was the apprentice.

I went back to the others, our nether rays floating silently in the air as we spoke, waiting for the command to move. "Alright," I said. "We're in the twilight realm, and I can see Whirlgo's trail. We follow him to the Black Temple, quickly pull him into the twilight realm, and handle him there." I looked at Orande. "Orande, are you sure about coming? I mean, can't he just pull that pit lord back out?"

She shook her head. "He took me by surprise," she said gloomily. "I'll be ready this time." She took a deep breath. "Home... I'm home..." I heard a note of wistfulness in her voice, and for once, it seemed to be genuine.

I nodded. "Alright, if you say so." I cracked my neck. "How do you think the Legion got that many cannons in place without anybody noticing before it was too late?"

Ialion had the answer. "It's like what you said back in Dalaran, Amanthe. We're in relatively quiet times. People's guards are starting to lower. It's been, what? Sixty years since the last major Legion attack? They took advantage of it, and not many people pay much attention to Shadowmoon Valley these days, after the draenei reclaimed the Temple."

Aruen frowned. "But then why didn't my kind notice?"

"Tough to say," Orande remarked. "But I'd be willing to be that they did notice, but the Legion used a shock-and-awe technique. Point is, they've sealed off Shadowmoon Valley from the outside world, and if your meditation is right, they want something from the Black Temple. Or..." She smiled. "... or maybe put something inside it. This relic, maybe? But that wouldn't make sense."

"The Temple of Karabor has many locking mechanisms. They were designed in such a way that..." Aruen froze, horror etched plainly on his face.

"Aruen?" I said, Ialion's nether ray grunting.

His voice dropped to a whisper. "In such a way that you'd need other artifacts to access them. That must be what they're doing. The relic they took from our hall in Orgrimmar half a century ago, the recording they took now... they're getting access to _another_ artifact. And whatever it is, you can bet that if it's in the Temple of Karabor, it will have _potential._" He shook his head, recollecting himself. "Enough waiting around here! We need to get a move on, _now!_" He shouted, using the harness to urge his nether ray up and forward. The rest of us quickly followed him, but all too soon they fell behind Ialion and I, since we were the only ones who knew which way Whirlgo's trail even went.

It was obvious he took precautions to throw pursuers of his path. His trail of corruption swirved left, right, up and down. Loops around spires of black stone, dangerous dives close to lava pits. But there was only one thing he could do to throw us off; speed. Which, sadly he had. His nether ray was faster than ours, and so the trail of corruption continued to fade as we went, even though he hadn't had so much as an hour head start. On the plus side, nether rays were _fast._

Craters seething with green fire whirled away past us, canyons alight with emerald lava stretching across the landscape slowly moved behind us. Off to the far right I could see a base of cobblestones, similar to that of the Allerian Stronghold, and Honor Hold. Only it was so much more damaged. Chunks of wall the size of dragonspawn Generals were simply gone, smoke rose from several gently smoldering buildings, and there were far, far more craters there than in Shadowmoon's main body. As I watched, a portion of its walls exploded into mist, a crater being punched in the stone behind it as some sort of projectile blasted them. Streaks of red mist sailed through the heavens, punching through the walls, and faint globs of ruby fog milled about as demons no doubt fought defenders.

Orande frowned, and spoke in a miserable tone of voice. "I know that place. It's the Wildhammer outpost. Looks like they're under attack, and have been for a while. But there may still be survivors down there. We should go help them."

Before I could protest, Ialion did. "No. We're far enough behind the apprentice as it is! We _can not_ waste time to go do anything else besides what we absolutely have to. Speaking of which, it may be a good time to eat soon." Aruen and Orande both grumbled, and I felt a little pain stab in my heart, but I agreed with Ialion. We could not get off track; we _had_ to stop the apprentice. This was our last chance. And so, we continued to fly past them, following Whirlgo's winding trail, leaving them to their fate. Our nether rays continued their incredible flight speed until Ialion deemed it was time to eat, and to feed them. We set down in a little 'cage' of black stones, and Ialion flew off in his true form.

Orande used her demonic magic to tie the nether rays to the ground. At first they hissed and growled, but now they floated silently, beady eyes closed, perhaps in sleep. There was no risk creating a fire, since what could ever be drawn to us here in the twilight realm? There wasn't much in the way of wood, but a few skeletons of trees, blackened from overexposure to shadow magic, were sacrificed for our purposes. The trees had been dead so long they could be seen in the twilight realm. Their fire burned black and dark green, and instead of crackling, the twigs let out haunted moans as they burned.

We sat around the fire in silence for several minutes before Ialion returned, returning from his hunt in the physical realm with two boars clutched in his claws. Upon closer inspection, I saw that these were the same sort of spiked boar I'd seen in the Blasted Lands and Helfire, but black and green instead of red and black. He dropped them next to the fire, letting me see long claw marks on one, and a bite wound in the other's neck. He grabbed the bitten one in his fangs and hurled it over to the nether rays, which woke up with a shriek, then lowered themselves and dug in. He shifted back to his mortal form, and gestured towards me. Shortly, we were eating roasted felboar. It tasted like regular bacon and pork, but if I let it sit on my tongue too long it started to sizzle. I don't want to think about what that meant for its nutrition, but food is food. Once we'd eaten that, Ialion flew off again, being the fastest on his own, and brought back some dark, murky water _in the boars' skulls._ Aruen and I both blessed the water to dispel its taint, boiled it over the fire, blessed it again, and then it was safe to drink.

"How bad do you think things are at the Temple?" I asked.

Aruen shook his head. "Impossible to tell, but I would assume their situation is dire. I don't know how long the Legion has been besieging them; the longer they've been under attack, sealed off from outside help, the less likely it is for us to succeed."

"Can't you just meditate, find the answer by asking the Light?" Ialion asked.

He shook his head. "Doing so takes a great deal of effort. The Light's power is infinite, but my and Amanthe's abilities to call on it are not. It will take time before I can do such a thing again." He finished drinking his share of the skull of water he shared with Orande, placing the now-empty bone on the ground. Ialion finished slurping up his water, and tossed it over the stone ring around us. "We should get going soon," he continued, glancing towards the four nether rays hovering over the skeletonized felboar. "It is safe to assume that the apprentice will have also stopped to feed himself and his ray, especially his mount, but that is no excuse to wait around. We must go." He stood, uncrossing his legs, and went towards one of the red nether rays. Orande also took a red one, Ialion once again the blue, leaving me with the green one. Orande dispelled the crackling chains of magic, and we were off, following Whirlgo's ever-diminishing, but still vivid, path of corruption.

We continued to fly through the safety of the twilight realm, the only danger being the occasional explosion of violet tinted emerald flame far, far below us. The volcanic Hand of Gul'dan rose up to our left, spitting and belching lava like a mountain spring does water. Even from this distance, I could see, far off in the distance, the outlines of the former Black Temple, rising up with jagged black spires. But it didn't provoke any sense of dread in me by itself, it wasn't in the hold of evil anymore. Or maybe it was; the demons, without a doubt, had their sights set on it. Whirlgo's trail confirmed that, since now his path went straight as an arrow towards the Temple. At one point his trail thickened in a general area, no doubt where he'd rested and fed his mount before continuing on. The red mist continued to thin, but it was still more than vibrant enough for us to follow the path.

It swerved northwest, snaking behind the Hand of Gul'dan and sailing over a river of lava flowing freely from the volcano.

"You know," I shouted to Ialion in Draconic. "I hear that the Netherwing dragons make their homes around here."

"Oh yeah, I forgot about that," he responded from infront of me where he road. "After we take care of that apprentice, maybe I'll go take a look at them. It'll be nice to see the ones that created the idea for our kind. In a way, I owe my existence to them."

"That's why I thought you'd like to meet them. Once we're done with this, I mean."

He nodded. "I think I'd like that. Thanks for reminding me. Hey, I think I can see something around the Temple... yeah, looks like demonic corruption."

I looked, and frowned when there was nothing. Of course, his eyes were better than mine, and within ten minutes I saw the Temple of Karabor in greater detail.

It took my breath away. A courtyard half the size of Dalaran. Multiple floors reaching higher than the Cathedral in Stormwind. Vast, open spaces, spots of dirt where I assumed meadows flourished, minature rivers flowing through it. And the outside completely covered in... red... mist...

"Ah!" I shouted in disbelief. No. _No fucking way._ "_Son of a bitch!_"

The others looked at me, Ialion asking, "What?"

"Look at the Temple, Ialion! Graaah! How are we going to follow that gnome's trail in the middle of all THAT?"

He narrowed his eyes and snarled, prompting his nether ray to do the same. "Titans _damn it!_ You're right, I hadn't thought of that. Damn it, damn it, damn it!" He roared lightly. "We still gotta go in. Damn it, we've_ got_ to try, we've already come so far!"

I sighed, my head all of a sudden beginning to buzz pleasurably. The world seemed to quiet down, a feeling of ease resting over me. But it was soon defeated by my aggravation. "If we're lucky, the apprentice is arrogant enough, or rather, the Legion is arrogant enough, to keep him there for a little while. If he's already done what needs to be done..."

"We've failed," Ialion finished. For a moment silence descended on us. "Alright, here's what we need to do. Aruen, you said he's bringing that artifact to the Legion so they use it with the one they took fifty years ago to get some _other_ relic, right?"

He simply nodded in response, prompting Ialion to continue. "Well, once they get this relic, they'll need to take it to a portal, right? Now, I've done a fair bit of stopping the Legion's activities before in my life." I looked over at him. Had he? He hadn't mentioned what he'd done in the thirty-odd years we'd gone separate ways. Now I knew. "They always send their items to one destination in particular. Now, I've never gone to _see_ this destination, that'd be suicide, but I'll bet you it's wherever their prime base is, likely Argus." I caught a subtle twitch in the tendrils by Aruen's head. "These portals use up a _lot_ of power, since there's some sort of energy emanating from that place, making portals and teleports more and more difficult as you near it. It takes them virtually no magical power to go _away_ from there, but going _back_ is a nightmare."

He took a breath, and went on. "So the portal they're using to send the artifact will be big. Elf, you're the prime expert on Legion tactics here, I'd guess. You _do_ hunt them. Where do you think they'd put a portal?"

She pondered this for a moment, then frowned. "They'd place it somewhere nobody wants to go. Someplace where a force that resists or infiltrates would want to avoid, and has much natural power. It wouldn't be their main portal, that would be used for reinforcements." Her face darkened. "The Reliquary of Souls."

I cocked my head. "Pardon?"

Aruen coughed, stopping Orande, and continued himself. "The Reliquary of Souls is a region in the Temple of Karabor. While my kind lived there, it was the place where the souls of the righteous would congeal into one being that the worthy would ask for advice. During the Temple's occupation, the Reliquary turned into a void for the damned. The virtuous being became twisted into three facets sharing the same body, the concentrated suffering, desire, and anger of thousands of lost spirits. When we raided the Black Temple, we destroyed this being. As far as I know, the Reliquary has been restored to its former state, maybe corrupted once again. But it was a sight of great power at all points in its history."

Ialion nodded. "That's it, then. We're not chasing Whirlgo anymore. We're following this artifact he has, and it sounds like it's going to this Reliquary place. We'll need to intercept it there, but..." He frowned. "There's no way to know when it'll get there. We might emerge too late and loose it, or too early and be besieged by the Legion." He rubbed his chin. "_But_ if we find any survivors, and enlist their aid, we can bring them there through the twilight realm and get a foothold there! Yeah, I like the sound of that."

"I agree. But first," I said. "Let's get there."

Without another sound, we guided our nether rays through the gargantuan courtyard of the... what was it now? Temple of Karabor or Black Temple? I shrugged to myself. Didn't matter. The enormous gate that separated the courtyard into two was shattered, and didn't look like it could keep out a kitten let alone four nether rays in the twilight realm. The red fog was greatest behind the shattered door, clumped up in glowing red globs that might've been the Legion's portal machines in the physical realm. We climbed off our nether rays at the base of a gargantuan stairwell, and Orande tied them down with her magic. We ignored their hissing, and used the teleporter to the inside of the Temple.

The inside of the temple was in utter chaos. Barricades of stone were thrown up at haphazard locations through the hallways, some shattered, others bearing scorch marks, some overturned. Small craters and gashes filled the floor, as did shattered weapons and armor. The red mist here was less dense, but still all-pervading. This was Legion territory, through and through. But none of that was what interested us. Under Orande's directions, we toured the Temple, searching for any place not overgrown by the corruption of the Burning Legion. We wound corners, jumped obstacles, climbed stairs up and down, wandered barren courtyards that may have flourished with plant life, either protected or destroyed. We briefly toyed with Ialion going with Aruen, who had also been in the Temple before, to go see the Reliquary of Souls and check if there's anything that might be a Legion portal, but we decided against splitting up.

So we continued to wander, as fast as we could, being on a timer as we were. But before too long, we found a spot not corrupted by the Legion, and went deeper. The entire hall was free, and it could be assumed it was the base of the defenders. Forges crackled along the walls, sparks flying out from anvils as draenei hammered metal in the physical realm.

"Alright," Ialion said as we entered a large, spherical chamber three dragons across. "Let's try here." We came to a stop as he held up his hands, twilight energy swirling across then. He held the energy for one second, two seconds, three, then created a portal to the physical realm. He was the first one through, followed by me. As I stepped in, I braced for the familiar sensation of going blind for a moment, then being thrown out into the physical realm with a rough push.

The physical realm was occupied by a few draenei and broken, holding either a sword, axe, polearm, or bow. They stood in a ring, pointing their weapons at us. The ominous, gently howling black-and-purple portal behind us did little to calm their nerves. Ialion had his hands up, the universal sign for 'we come in peace'. Behind us, Aruen and Orande appeared, Aruen's presence making the draenei and broken slightly relax. Ialion turned around and closed the portal. Good of him to do so; wouldn't want any demons sneaking off into the twilight realm.

One of the broken, tall as a draenei, stepped forward. He wore green robes with brown spots covering it, and a gnarled staff in his right hand. The faint gleam of holy light rippled around the staff, with bright green energy around its flower-like headpiece. His blue eyes barely had the glow that was so distinctive among the draenei, and his face was covered in scars like a spider web, attesting to either a history of fighting, or the brutality and length of the Legion's invasion of the Temple.

He opened his mouth to speak, slowly. "Who are you and what is your purpose here in the Temple of Karabor?" His voice was deep and slow, like the rumbling of boulders sliding down a mountain. "And furthermore, what sort of dark portal was..." He waved the hand not holding the staff. "_That_?" Ialion opened his mouth to speak, but the broken, clearly the leader of the group, maybe the resistance as a whole, interrupted him. "Not _you._" He pointed to Aruen. "Him."_  
><em>

Aruen bowed. "I am Aruen, and this is Orande," he said, gesturing to the night elf in question. "This is Elizabeth, and this is Ian." Good, he still had the courtesy to use our fake names. Unneeded, but you never know how word will travel. "We have come here tracking a gnomish apprentice for the Burning Legion, who we believe is using two of our relics in their hands in order to obtain another, more potent one, from here."

The broken grunted, and waved his hand. The people around us relaxed, lowering their weapons. "Return to your duties. I will finish up here." The crowd dispersed, returning to either fixing weapons, healing some of the injured I now noticed on several makeshift beds around the chamber. "I have been wondering why the Legion is so bent on taking the Temple. We have tried sending for help for days, but Outland's nether winds make magical communication impossible, and the Legion has blockaded Shadowmoon Valley. I doubt the rest of the world knows just how dire our situation is." He shook his head. "I'm getting off topic. So, one of our relics... I can think of a few they might want."

"Oh?" asked Orande, sounding bored. "And what might those be?"

"We have one relic that is capable of strengthening the metal any weapon or armor is made of, another that magnifies the effects of magic placed into it, especially holy magic, and one last relic that enables the user to teleport to any place within sight. So you think the Legion is going after one of those?"

The Kingslayer nodded. "I am certain. Tell me, has anything happened around the Reliquary of Souls?"

"Our scouts have reported a Legion transporter, or rather the sounds of one. They were not willing to get close, now that the souls are being corrupted. Luckily, there's no Essence to corrupt this time around, but nobody wants to get close. Why?"

"Just what we thought. We believe the Legion is going to try to take their artifact out of the Temple by that portal. But we don't know when; it could be tomorrow, it could've already happened. We need help to stop them."

"You're asking me to assign some of my men to your group in order to hold the Reliquary and stop this artifact from falling into the Legion's hand. I understand the necessity of stopping whatever the Legion came here for in the _first_ place, but if you haven't noticed, we're pinned down here. This is the last hold-out we've got. How do you want to get us all the way to the Reliquary from _here?_"

Ialion interjected in the brief pause. "The same way we got all the way here. We can open portals to another realm, shift us out of the physical realm. The Legion will not be able to see you or touch you, nor you them. The travelling will be completely and utterly safe."

"Even so, you expect us to hold the Reliquary for _any_ length of time?"

"Not any," Ialion continued. "Just long enough to get that artifact the Legion wants and shift it out of the physical realm. Once the Legion can't get at it, we can decide what to do with it."

He nodded. "Alright. I see. If what you say is true, it does indeed appear that the Legion's sole purpose here is to steal one of the magical relics here. I will bring all our remaining forces, but the Legion will not be far behind us. Have the portal to safety open, and be ready to close it. I will be the last one through; once you see me on the reverse end, close the portal immediately." He walked past us, then paused, looking back at us. "By the way, the name is Seer Nerulu, Akama's successor."

Aruen sucked in a breath. "Akama..."

"Has fallen. Now, let me get the army together."

I nodded. "Alright," I said, casting a portal while he sprinted away. I finished the moment he was out of sight, shouting out orders. The entire camp burst into action. The injured were scooped up on their beds and brought through the portal to a waiting Ialion, soldiers went through, carrying all the armor and weapons they could, then returning to carry more boxes in. None of them spoke a word about what the twilight realm was like, instead focusing entirely on getting as many supplies in as they could to what their leader called 'safety'. Within fifteen minutes, the four of us were, in the twilight realm, accompanied by roughly two dozen assorted draenei and broken, and another dozen who were either too injured to fight or treating said injured.

I waited nervously as fighters ran in, bloodied from holding off the Legion, panting heavily, sweat streaming down their blue foreheads. As they fell into the twilight realm, Ialion took them aside where Aruen and Orande explained the situation more in depth, so that nobody was left in the dark, and I waited besides the portal to close it the moment needed. Gradually, the soldiers running through were more ragged, had worse injuries, and ran faster. This escalated until there were three dozen soldiers able to fight in the twilight realm, and Seer Nerulu came bursting through the portal. I didn't have to wait for his command; the portal closed before anything of demonic origin could come through.

He looked around once inside, taking in the purple scenery, before turning to me. "This is your place of safety?" I nodded. "I do not like this. There is such darkness and corruption here. _Old_ corruption. It's... not natural."

I sighed. "Dark doesn't always mean evil, you know. Trust me, this realm is about as safe as you can get."

He turned soul-piercing eyes on me. "Do not mistake me, the spirits do not mark you as evil. But this place... it shouldn't exist."

I twitched. Look a gift horse in the mouth, much? "Well, it _does_ exist, and it just so happens to be saving your - "

Aruen stepped in before I could continue. "Elizabeth, please. Seer Nerulu, you are the leader here. Please, lead us to the Reliquary of Souls."

He nodded. "Alright. Let me just get some things in order." With that, he walked past us, and started speaking with his people, telling who comes with us, and who stays with the injured, where they go if they don't return in so much time, so on. Before too long, we were heading towards the Reliquary of Souls to intercept the draenic artifact most likely being shipped there.

Just hope we're not too late.

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><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<strong>


	18. Chapter 18:Phase One

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Thanks to dharak for being my beta!**

**Chapter published 8/15/12**

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><p><span>Amanthe<span>

As we followed the Seer to the Reliquary of Souls through the twilight realm, I heard a rather familiar voice.

_"Amanthe... to... stay... can... even... me?'_

I shook my head and, knowing she'd barely hear anything I sent, used the link. _'Sorry, you're too broken up. Whatever it is, can you tell me once I get back to Azeroth?'__  
><em>

_'Damn... Outland's... winds... really... link.' _A pause. _'I'll... right.'_

The rest of our walk through the Temple went without further contact from Selriona. We walked through the red mist that only Ialion and I could see, slowly approaching the Reliquary of Souls.

Eventually, after what may have been an hour, we came to a hallway that was in utter disrepair. Entire sections of walls had collapsed, and even in the twilight realm I could see strange ectoplasm filaments stretching wall to wall. In places the floor was cracked, a faint purple-tinted cyan light seeping up. Ahead of us, I could see several of the defenders shiver. Judging by their reactions, the Legion had corrupted the Reliquary again.

Just great.

The hallway was long, but before too long we turned right down a ramp into what had to be the main chamber of the Reliquary of Souls.

A blue spiral was in the middle of the floor, spiraling outward onto the edges. On the far end was some sort of massive cage, hanging down limply with, as far as I could tell, nothing in it. One single, extremely dense glob of demonic corruption was situated right infront of it. We came to a stop in the middle of the room, which, though only Ialion and I could see, was close to what must've been the Legion's portal.

Seer Nerulu turned to me. "We are ready to fight the Legion at any time, while we still have the element of surprise. Can you send us back?"

I nodded. "Yep. One way portal, coming right up," I said, weaving my magic together and opening the portal back to the physical realm. The draenei and broken, as well as our little group, positioned around the portal.

"On my mark," said the Seer. A pause. "Mark!"

With that, we all charged into the portal.

Ialion and I were the last ones in, the world blacking out and then returning without the red and purple fogs. There were demons _everywhere._

Imps stood around felguards, already hurling fireballs into the fray. The felguards charged at several of the broken, and I saw two eredar standing far back, their hands shimmering with shadow and fire. Not far behind us was a strange black gate with green circles swirling in its middle, the Legion's portal to wherever.

Ialion switched to his true form and took to the air with a shield of light around him woven by me. I took a moment to shield myself, then sink into the shadows.

I spotted a particularly dense cluster of imps chucking fireballs, and focused my magic. An explosion of twilight flame washed out from the middle of them, the power behind the attack making their physical bodies fall apart as they returned to the Nether. I threw myself to the side as one of the eredar finished their spells, a barrage of shadow bolts flying outwards in all directions. Screams of pain filled the air as some of them found their mark, but luckily I managed to avoid the attack and then call upon the Light to smite it.

I dodged under a fireball, and blasted the mind of the imp that had thrown it. The little creature shrieked once and fell silent. I continued to send my magic into the fray, twilight, shadow and light mixed together. I saw Ialion in the air breathing fire in devastating strafing runs, Aruen casting healing spells by the dozen, keeping everybody alive, and I saw Orande... wow. She was a tornado, her poisoned warglaives burning with felfire, as did her eyesockets behind the blindfold. She swept her weapons in wide circles, tearing through the demons' hides like they were made of parchment. At one point felguards tried to dogpile her, but she encased herself in a shell of fire and that was that.

A fireball impacted against my barrier, drawing me back into the fight. Can't let myself get distracted. I held out my hands and took a deep breath, channeling my magic into the imp. A rippling, coiled beam of darkness flew into it, and waves of shadow radiated from the imp, searing the minds of demons in proximity. One of the draenei swung a massive warhammer at said imp, killing it, but by that point there were no more demons around it.

Orande, still encased in flames, soared through the air like a comet and smashed into one of the eredar, releasing an explosion of flames that shrouded their fight in smoke. Ialion swooped down and clawed apart a felguard that had tried to approach me while I kept the imps' fire off of him. The fight was over quickly. Too quickly, in fact. One would think the Legion would post more guards here, or maybe they hadn't expected many to be here, and word hadn't reached them yet that the draenei weren't pinned down. Before long, the Reliquary of Souls had been cleaned out, and we stood ready to intercept reinforcements and destroy the portal.

Except for _one_ tiny issue.

Seer Nerulu turned to Orande, now conveniently _not_ on fire, and pointed an accusing finger. "You. Demon hunter." In my eighty-plus years of life, I have never heard so much loathing concentrated into just three words.

Orande growled, and then smiled. "Yes, I'm a demon hunter. What of it? I just helped you, so a little gratitude might be nice."

"Gratitude for those who worked for the Betrayer?" he growled out.

"Yes, worked, past tense. As in, I do not anymore," she said sweetly. Somehow, that was even worse than if she'd been screaming. Even so she drew closer to the Seer, making a point of showing she was taller than him. The others, including us, began to clear away from the two as they stared each other down, which was easy for Orande since she didn't have any eyes left to blink.

Oddly enough, it was Orande who broke the glaring contest first, turning her back on the Seer and walking over to us. Ialion had shifted back to his normal form, and was already explaining how he was on their side to the broken, who, from what I heard, weren't buying his argument of 'I use dark magic, but that doesn't make me evil'.

Right when I was beginning to wonder when somebody would come question me about my loyalties, even after I'd just helped them defeat a Legion post (With somewhat alarming ease) Orande snapped her head over to the ramp, turning her back on the limp cage behind us.

"Hang on," she said. "I can feel something approaching. It feels like... eredar. Two of them, very powerful." Aruen put a hand to his head and concentrated. A few of the draenei and one or two of the broken also did the same. I frowned. I'd never learned how to sense evil. Maybe once this is over I should study that practice.

I looked up at the ramp, and my eyes widened as Ialion walked over to my side. _There was Whirlgo!_ Peeking down at us, no doubt sizing up our force. We locked gazes, and then he jumped out, knowing his cover was blown.

"That's him!" I shouted.

A moment later a beam of darkness exploded from something he held in two hands, crashing onto our little war party with a deafening crash. The nova it released sent bodies flying, and they laid still, the shockwave knocking me down. He held up his hands again, letting me see a blue and purple sphere in the middle, and then a pale blue beam lanced out. It struck the ground a hair's width away from me, and a frost nova blew out from it, locking my feet into the ground with heavy chains of ice. Ialion's hand clamped down on my arm and, with his not-inconsiderable strength, yanked me out of the magic's effects just in time to avoid another shadow beam's explosion.

Everything fell apart as we struggled to take cover under Whirlgo's assaults. One of the frost beams struck Seer Nerulu head-on, encasing him in ice, and the next shadow nova... _shattered _him. By the Light, it just fucking _broke _him.

We kept diving for cover as he let out explosive rays of energy from whatever he held in his hands, each shot killing a few people. We were so stupid! While Nerulu and Orande argued, we should've destroyed the portal while we had the chance! But instead we'd gotten distracted with Orande being a demon hunter and Ialion a twilight drake. We should've discussed that earlier! But then, we'd have arrived later, and then Whirlgo might've already passed through the portal. Damned if we do, damned if we don't.

Ialion turned to his true form and tried to fly at Whirlgo, who simply held up his hands and fired a beam of shadow at Ialion. In spite of his natural resistance to shadow, he flew back onto the blueish stone with a _crack._ I winced, wove a renew onto him, then jumped over another frost-nova that Whirlgo fired at us.

Finally, only the four of us were left, everybody else laying around, broken and destroyed by the relentless magical assaults, and we weren't doing too well either, shadow burns covering our skin, frostbite nipping at our fingers.

He held up the spherical relic again, and I acted out of impulse, raising a shield of light infront of me. Orande and Aruen pitched in, weaving their respective magics onto my barrier to resist the wall, causing it to thicken and ripple with fire. The dark ray smashed right into the barrier.

It was like I was holding the weight of Azeroth on my shoulders, a thunderstorm's concentrated power flowing into me. Even through our combined shields the force of the attack made me _slide_ back, sweating under the effort of holding off the strength of the spell. Every muscle in my body burned, every magical iota straining to hold it back. And then, mercifully, it ended.

The three of us panted heavily, Ialion was still recovering from the blast of shadow magic, and Whirlgo walked down the ramp, right arm extended to hold out the artifact, confidence plastered on his face. Now that I wasn't running from the next lash of magical energy, I could see the artifact clearly. It was spherical, large enough for me to hold in one hand, patterned blue and royal purple, with what appeared to be a glass cylinder cutting through its middle.

"Well, looks like you beat me to it." Oh great, he's one of _those_ people. "Gotta say, I'm loving this artifact. Got half a mind to keep it for myself, you know?"

I groaned, still shaken from the effort of holding off that attack. Next to me, Aruen looked up at him. "You. I will make you this offer. The Legion does not pay its servants well. Hand us over the relic, _now_, and all will be forgiven."

Aruen moved towards the ramp, but Whirlgo simply held up the sphere again. "Ah, ah, ah! First, I want a few answers. Like first of all, how did you even know to look for me?"

_That's it. Just keep him talking until we recover. _"I heard a rumor in Dalaran about the Ice King's apprentice. So I went to him," I said, casting renews on the four of us.

Whirlgo cursed, momentarily lowering the relic. Before we could capitalize on that, he raised it back up. We couldn't attack him, not with that deathtrap pointed at us. We just had to keep him talking until an opening presented itself. Behind us, Ialion got to his feet and trotted to my side, growling at him. "So, that old windbag gave me away, did he? Fine! I never liked him anyway!" He turned to Aruen. "And you! What the hells do you mean the Legion doesn't pay its servants well? Did you not see what I just did? I mean, sure, that's the relic I'm delivering to them for phase one, but - " _Phase one?_ " - they gave me so much power anyway. Think Samuel taught me how to use shadow spells? Pah!"

My heart froze. _SAMUEL?_ I stuttered. "W-who's - "

"Oh, that's right, nobody knows the Ice King's real name. He's touchy about that, keeping others guessing keeps himself amused! Ha!" I flexed my fingers, feeling some of my magic become responsive again after the defense. Just a little longer...

Whirlgo continued. _Light,_ what a chatterbox. "Well, you're about to _die_, so I may as well tell you." Well, the Ice King _did _say he was arrogant. "His name's Samuel Sivering." My mouth gaped. "What, you knew - ah, doesn't matter. Where was I? Oh yes." He swiveled his head to face Aruen again. "No, the Legion does pay well. I mean, I got a ton of power that I never would've gotten anyhow! With more on the way for me, and all I have to do is just throw this thing," He tossed it up and caught it one-handed, and pointed it at us again. "In there."

Orande wasn't having it, all but shouting in rage at him. "You just try! See if we don't stop you!"

He just chuckled at that, raising the artifact. I braced myself for another onslaught of magic. "Yes, about that..." Two eredar came and flanked him atop the ramp, one on either side of him. They were extremely tall, standing as tall as a tree, wielding a staff just as tall with felflame flickering atop the spiked tops. All thoughts of Samuel - _The Ice King, my brother! - _fled from me. One of the eredar looked down at the gnome and spoke something in Demonic.

Whirlgo sighed, annoyed. I saw a shimmer of dark indigo out of the corner of my eye. "You demons never let me have any fun. Well, goodbye."

A teal beam exploded out of the device, but just before I could raise a barrier in desperation to deflect the strike, a shimmering twilight barrier enveloped all of us.

I looked to my right, and raised an eyebrow at Selriona's kneeling mortal form. "Nice of you to show up!"

The beam vanished, and with that she staggered back with a gasp. "Sorry I'm late, flying in Outland is all hells." Aruen and Orande backed up from her, and I also gave her some space. Whirlgo shouted an indignant _What!_ and the eredar made noises of surprise, stepping back. Her form shimmered, purple-tinted black hair condensing into horns, robes merging into her skin and turning to scales, fingers fusing and nails lengthening into claws.

Whirlgo sighed. "Well, fuck." Then we charged.

Aruen and Orande went for the eredar on our right, Ialion and I for the other one, and Selriona right for the gnome. Just before she could get her claws on him, he vanished in a flash of arcane energy. My head whirled around to his new position, behind her, as he tossed the artifact towards the Legion transporter. I growled. _No._ I wove a levitate on it right away, causing it to miss its mark and land behind the portal. Whirlgo and I made eye contact, then both of us sprinted after it.

_'Go! Get the eredar! I've got Whirlgo!'_

_'Argh! Okay, if we're this close the link works, but it HURTS!' _As if to prove her point, a fresh headache swelled up in me. I ducked under one of the apprentice's frostbolts and wove a shield around myself. Strength flooded my body, letting me push myself faster and faster, determined to get the artifact before him. I jumped over a shadow bolt and turned behind the Legion portal, making a leap for the artifact, careful to avoid the portal itself.

The moment I held it in my hands, I smiled. Now, how does this thing work? I held it up at Whirlgo, who skidded to a halt, horror clear on his face, and went with my gut. I cast a mind blast onto the relic.

An explosion of shadow magic radiated out in a concentrated beam right ahead, and I nearly lost my grip on the thing. _Damn_ but that was some kick._  
><em>

A drake's roar filled the air, and a moment later the blast struck a few meters off from Whirlgo, radiating out in a devastating tidal wave. It caught him in a mana shield that was definitely _not_ there before. Even so, his barrier imploded and the nova sent him flying with a _wragh, _landing with a thump. Giving him a chance to be uncorrupted was over. Time to _purge._

I held it up again, now understanding its function. A magic amplifier. Whatever spell went into it, it released a concentrated blast of that magic outwards, amplified _heavily._ I tossed a twilight fireball into the relic, and watched in dissapointment as the mage blinked out of the way of the resulting boulder of explosive blue fire.

Blinked out of the way, right in front of me.

He pointed one hand up and knocked the artifact out of my hands with a shadow bolt, then thrust both hands at me. A whirlwind of cold exploded outwards, catching me right in the chest and knocking me back. My shield of light held firm, but it flickered dangerously, and the fall still hurt me. I looked up and realized the relic was _still in the air__, _suspended by my levitation. Whirlgo noticed this too, and frowned for a moment. He looked my way, and snarled. His left hand covered itself in wisps of frost magic, then he slammed it into the ground. I felt something off in the air, in the ground, a tingle on my spine that told me _get out of there now!__  
><em>

Listening to my instincts I dove out of the way just as an enormous icicle exploded from where I'd been before, as tall as me. I scrambled to my feet and looked at Whirlgo. He raised his left hand, still covered in an aura of frost, and clenched it into a fist.

The icicle next to me immediately became active, sharp, smaller icicles emerging and retracting at a frenzied pace. I lurched my head forward, and avoided one that was about to hit my neck. I threw myself further away from the icicle, and spoke a word of pain.

Whirlgo screamed and fell to his knees, invisible molten needles piercing his skin from all places. While he was incapacitated, I charged up a twilight pyroblast and tossed it at him -

- only for the falling artifact to intercept it, a mammoth blast of twilight fire flying off to the side and smashing into the wall, leaving a tauren-sized crater.

I cursed and charged up another blast, when my magic abruptly slipped away from me, like a struggling fish in a stream. I tried to call up another twilight attack, but no magic came. I realized what had just happened. He'd counterspelled me.

Before I could do anything else, I found a prison of ice surrounding my shield of light, entombing me. The deep, freezing block was fading quick, and through it I could see the others still fiercely battling the eredar. A single, miniscule shard of ice crashed into the block surrounding me, shattering it with a crash, imploding my shield, and stabbing me in the gut. I grunted and fell on my back, before hastily casting a healing spell on myself and shifting back into the shadows.

To my horror, Whirlgo had picked up the artifact again, and instead of trying to throw it into the demonic machine, aimed it at me. I closed my eyes and instantly dispersed into darkness, the following explosion of darknesss doing nothing to me. I swirled around him as he turned around to throw the artifact into the portal, and the moment I reformed I _screamed._

He tightened his grip on the relic and bolted straight away from me, and from the Legion portal. I took the opportunity to nail him with a twilight pyroblast, shaking him out of his fear. Before he could do anything else, I wove a spell onto him, slamming his mouth shut and silencing him.

His eyes widened, and he jumped out of the way of my next fireball, but he couldn't run away from the devouring disease I cast, draining his health. He ducked below a stream of mind-shredding magic, and the silencing spell let up. Immediately he teleported next to me and stomped the ground, a wave of frost exploding outwards and trapping my feet. Before I could do anything he gestured with his hands again, shattering the ice. My feet were cut horribly, so I again quickly cast a renew on myself just in time to see the ice shards that had previously been around my feet swirling around him like a tornado, cutting me repeatedly. I stumbled back and wove a barrier on myself again, using the temporary burst of speed to get out of the frigid hurricane.

Sadly, that was exactly what he wanted, and now he threw the artifact into the portal again. I mentally shouted, and called up an explosion of twilight flame just around the portal, the shockwave knocking the artifact away again. A shadow nova exploded next to me, whether from Selriona, Orande, or one of the eredar I don't know. Out of the corner of my eyes I saw said dragon covered in a purple shell, curled up in mid-air, before roaring. Instantly, I felt strength infuse me. Twilight lightning flickered between my fingertips, my mana pool filled to the brim in seconds, I felt all around _great._

I launched myself at the artifact, faster than I'd ever ran before, snatching it up. I whirled around to Whirlgo and called upon the Light to blast him with holy flame. Sure enough, a pillar of holy fire rained down from the ceiling right onto him, and I could see that the pillar was subtly tinted purple. I held out my hands and threw another twilight pyroblast at him, cast faster than I thought possible. He managed to dodge it, twilight-infused holy fire still burning at his robes. He quickly fired a shadowbolt at me, which collided before I could even think to dodge, but it simply fell off my skin like water. I roared with power and fired another pyroblast at him, only for it to be deflected by a block of ice. I scowled in disbelief. Great. But, I still had the artifact. Now, to take care of those eredar...

I spun around and shouted. "Take cover!" before casting another mind blast into the artifact.

Something wrapped around my legs from behind and I fell with a grunt, the enormous shadow-and-twilight blast hitting the ramp off-center, barely clipping one of the eredar's arms. The deafening explosion rang out, and I saw more than a little stones shower down, the entirety of the Temple groaning as its structure was hit. I cursed and turned around, kicking the gnome latched onto my feet. He flew away, a small arc of twilight lightning briefly connecting us, before coming to a halt. I crawled to a standing position, then almost fell back down when the rush from the power Selriona gave faded into nothing. Damn it! That had been my chance.

I narrowed my eyes at the mage. Oh well. I still have the artifact. I took aim and fired a smite into it. The explosion of Light that came out knocked my onto my back, in addition to carving a deep gash through the Reliquary's walls. A host of wraiths came out, wandered a bit, then exploded into nothingness. _Damn_, but it makes sense that a draenic magic-amplifying device would amplify the Light most of all.

An explosion rang out behind me, and heat scorched at my back. A slight shockwave made me stumbled forward, right into a salvo of arcane missiles. I screamed once in pain, then gritted my teeth until it ended. I looked up and saw Whirlgo throw his hands in the air, then he smiled. I looked to his left, and saw why. A pool of water materialized on the ground and rose up, swirling around to form a water elemental, but this one seemed... different. Where spray should have fallen off its cresting body, tiny shards of ice did. I groaned inwardly. Alright then. Two can play at that game. I reached out into the Twisting Nether, found what I was looking for, and pulled it to Azeroth. The shadowfiend appeared out of a pool of darkness next to me. I sent it after Whirlgo and raised the artifact, casting a twilight pyroblast into it. _Why couldn't this gnome just die?_

The blast of shadow struck exactly where Whirlgo had been a moment before blinking, obliterating his water elemental but leaving my shadowfiend out of its radius. It kept following the mage, who'd reappeared next to the Legion portal. Just as my shadowfiend was about to reach him, he... _vanished._ Just completely and totally vanished. I backed up, my shadowfiend fading back into the Nether now that its target was gone, and I looked to the others fighting the two eredar.

It looked like they had it under control. As I watched, Aruen, Ialion and Selriona were all keeping one of the eredar on the defensive, forcing it to deflect all manner of attacks with its staff. Orande, meanwhile, had covered the other one in dark smoke, trying no doubt to absorb its soul. I saw a few gashes on Selriona, and cast a healing spell on her while I had the chance. Once that was done, I waited one moment.

Two, three...

I jumped to the side right as Whirlgo's invisibility faded away and he grabbed at thin air. He screamed in frustration, and threw himself away from a collapsing piece of the Temple. I looked around. Oh shit, that blast from the relic while Selriona's power still flowed through me. It destabilized the building!

I roared and blasted Whirlgo's mind directly, making him fall to the ground with a trickle of blood coming out of his nose. He blinked away before I could roast him with a twilight fireball, and then cast another spell on me. Dark mist rose up around me, wrapping around me and pinning my arms to my body. I struggled, and managed to get away from him when he dashed at me and grabbed at the artifact. I dispelled the magic from myself easily, then turned over to where Whirlgo had gone -

"Amanthegetdown!" came Selriona's rushed voice. I looked in her general direction, not grasping her message in time, to see a boulder of twilight fire sailing right at me.

_FWOOM!_

I didn't feel the initial impact. All I knew was that one moment I was on the ground, the next moment I was sailing weightless through the air, and the next moment the ground came up to meet me with a _bone-crushing _greeting. I moaned, the draenic magic amplifier still somehow clutched in my left hand. I was on my stomach, and I vaguely heard somebody calmly shout my name. I tried to raise my head, but groaned loudly and dropped, utterly limp. Every centimeter of my body was on _fire. _I struggled to breathe in, only managing what resembled a rasping growl, my head swimming. Everything spun. Why was that Legion portal upside down and hanging from the ceiling, and why was the one remaining eredar sideways and falling to the walls?

Whirlgo stepped to me and knelt up, placing his hand on the ceiling, and grabbed the artifact. "Yoink," he said, turning around and running to the Legion portal, now right side up. He blinked past a fel fireball and a twilight meteor, _right into the portal. _He was gone.

Another chunk of the ceiling collapsed close by, the dust landing right on top of me. I struggled to get my breath back, and slowly but surely I regained the ability to make my ribcage expand. My skin felt sticky and raw, the twilight energy that had buffeted me causing said sensations.

Strong hands hoisted me to my feet and let go, but I instantly collapsed. Breathing was a titanic struggle, let alone standing. The arms caught me again, and out of the corner of my eyes I saw they were blue.

Selriona's worried voice seemed to come from worlds away. "Oh Titans oh Titans, Amanthe I am so sorry, are you alright?" I managed a weak moan, which was drowned out by the roar of falling debris... somewhere.

Aruen's voice, however, seemed to echo inside and out of my head, making me squeeze my eyes in pain. "We need to leave, now! I'll keep her healed, but the Temple of Karabor is collapsing, and no telling how much of it will - "

As if on cue, there was a great cacophony. Ialion's voice came from above and below me. "Run!"

The world was yanked out from under me as Aruen ran. I heard the collapsing of the Temple's ceiling, saw corridors flash by me and blend into each other, felt the occasional warmth of Aruen's healing or the odd chill of Selriona's mending. My body shook violently as Aruen ran up... stairs? Yes, those were definitely stairs, and the rumbling was getting softer. The motion stopped, and I felt warmth inundate my body, removing the haze over reality and siphoning away the horrible, horrible pain._  
><em>

Once I felt like I could form a coherent sentence, I tried to open my mouth. "Ungh... what happened?" I looked around. We were on top of a vaguely circular arena, but the vast majority of it was imploded into the Reliquary of Souls below. The roof of the Temple? "What are we doing here?"

"Amanthe," I heard Orande say. "You were hit by one of the dragon's fireballs full force, and one of the blasts from the artifact destabilized part of the Temple. We ran up here to get out of the way."

I struggled to stand up, and Aruen let me. I swayed dangerously and tipped, but the paladin caught me before I could fall. "Whirlgo... what happened?" I looked up at Selriona, who seemed to be trying to shrink into nothing, her body extremely transparent. "Did you... did you _blast_ me?" I asked incredulously. Another spike of pain wracked my body, but I ground my teeth together and fought it down.

"I didn't mean to! We had that one eredar on the defense, and it, it, it used its staff to redirect one of my fireballs right at you. I tried to warn you, but it moved too fast. Titans, if I hadn't blasted him that _wretched _mortal wouldn't have gotten away!"

My head throbbed as her voice rose. "Don't shout. Ungh. Your blasts really pack a _punch, _anyone ever tell you that?"

"I was trying to finish him off, and I bet you were already getting weakened by Whirlgo."

Something clicked in my mind, trains of thought slowly coming back to life. "How... how in the name of the Light did I _lose_ to him? I had him on the run! I had the artifact's control, and I still didn't beat him! How?"

"He was slippery," Orande said. "I saw him avoiding a lot of your spells, he kept blinking away from the artifact blasts. And even those were hard to aim, I saw that."

I groaned, pulling away from Aruen to see how well I was recovering. My legs shook like leaves in the wind, but several healing spells helped steady myself. "Damn it, we _had_ him! We were so _close! _It's all my fault. I should've blasted the portal while I had the chance - "

Before I could continue, Orande cut in, sounding genuinely angry. "Now stop right there, this was nobody's fault! Or more accurately, we're all to blame. I shouldn't have argued with Nerulu, instead I should've gotten right to work on disabling the portal. Ialion should've gone to help you with Whirlgo once the three of us took down the first eredar, Aruen should've helped heal you, you should have destroyed the portal, and Selriona should've just disemboweled the gnome right away. We all could've done something, but we _didn't_, and unless any of you have a time machine, we need to stop worrying about it. More to the point, how are we going to get back?"

"Well," Selriona said. "I can make us a portal back to Dalaran, get Amanthe some real medical help."

I remembered something, and gasped, guilt crashing down on me like a ton of bricks. "The Ice King!"

The dragon raised an eyebrow. "What about him?"

"Whirlgo said, we were trying to stall him." My head buzzed, and I forced myself to slow down. "We were trying to stall him while we steadied ourselves, after blocking one of those blasts. I got him talking about the Ice King, and he said his name. My brother, my... Samuel's the Ice King." She started, jolting back slightly. "Light, what kind of sister AM I?" I placed my hands over my face and drew them down, my heart feeling like a lump of stone in my chest. "Damn it, damn it, I always kept telling myself I'd write him later, I just kept putting it off, and I lost contact with him. How could've I forgotten my own _brother?_ What kind of a person am I? Oh Light damn it, he must think I'm dead or something! Oh he's gotten so old, I forgot - "

"Amanthe," Ialion said, clicking his claws along the stone floor. "Just stop. You're injured, we need to heal you. Taking one of Broodmother's fireballs to the face is not something to be joked about. You can worry about your brother later, but first lets worry about you. Titans, you almost _died!_"

But, my brother...

I relented. "Alright. Besides, we need to talk about something I got Whirlgo to tell us. Something called Phase one."

Selriona's hands glowed with arcane energy, and a portal opened, the city of Dalaran on the other end.

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><p><span>Whirlgo Fritzsprocket<span>

The portal's energies flooded around me like a broken dam. Enormous fonts of demonic power swirled around my body, propelling me against what felt like a strong headwind. Finally, the portal ended, and I arrived at my destination.

The world's skies were obscured by heavy black clouds, letting not even the slightest iota of light through. The land was barren, black and charred, with massive demonic war machines extending as far as the eye could see. Fel reavers were placed together with bright blue sparks of machinery, shiverra sent infernal meteors off into the sky where they would be cooled to ideal levels, fel cannons dotted nearly every single turn, the Burning Legion's activity the only source of light.

Every bone in my body ached, courtesy of the massive blasts that woman landed on me. I'd avoided the worst ones, but even _I_ couldn't outrun a word of darkness, a draining plague, a sealed mouth.

All the same she had been, as far as I can tell, betrayed by that really big purple dragon and blasted, which gave me the chance to snatch up the magic amplifier and make my escape. Haha! I was out of their reach now. The portal deactivated behind me, sealing the way back. It was probably to make sure they couldn't follow me. Yeah, that's it. Not to trap me here or anything, certainly not. I was on the demons' side.

I stood on the top of a hill, looking down at the plains of Argus as the Legion continued their never-ending preparations. I waited for a minute, getting my breath back. I cast a shadow mend or two on myself, and evocated. I smiled.

Yeah, I fucking _did it._ Even with two dragons after me, I _did it._ I licked a hand and slicked back my hair ever so slightly. Damn, I am _good._

An enormous explosion of fire filled the air right before me, making me yelp and scramble back. The flames solidified, and I froze. Terror seeped into my bones, petrified my body. I couldn't move, I couldn't speak. Power washed over me in incalculable waves, the being before me threatening to crush me with his mere presence. The wickedness that radiated off of him burrowed into the deepest corners of my mind, promising to give me nightmares for the rest of my life about drinking blood, grinding bones and ripping souls to shreds.

The red skinned eredar stood tall, but from where I was on the mountain his head was barely above me. There was a pair of leathery, bat-like wings that appeared useless - but you never know - extending from his shoulder-blades. Sulfur yellow eyes blazed, and though there was no pupil I could _feel_ his gaze shift down to me, a weight like a boulder pressing down on me. I fought the aura of dread and malice with everything I had and pushed myself up into a kneeling position, still holding the magic amplifier.

"Lord Kil'jaeden, I-I have brought the relic, a-as you requested of m-me." I shook violently like a twig, but forced myself to stop. I knew it was the eredar lord's presence making me so timid, but how could I not be? He was so much stronger than me. He could kill me with the same effort it takes to snap his fingers. He was older than me, He knew more than me, He was better than me in every way - stop it!

His voice resonated throughout my body like an earthquake, the sound waves bouncing back and forth in my limbs and actually making me _vibrate_. "So you have. You are behind schedule."

Panic, raw animal panic, seized my heart. "M-m-my deepest, humblest apologies, Lord. T-there were defenders at the portal. I-I had to fight them, since they w-were keeping me from entering t-the portal." I knelt my head lower, hoping to extend my life.

"Hmm... and tell me. These defenders. Did they survive? Did they learn our intentions?"

_I told them the artifact was for Phase one! Stupid, stupid, stupid!_ "I-I-Impossible, m-my lord. The Temple was in the m-m-middle of collapsing. T-they'd have been crushed, a-and they couldn't have o-opened a portal in t-that environment. They don't know our intentions, I swear!" Of course I had no idea if that was true! But could I tell him, '_oh, yes, your master plan has been discovered'_?NO!

"Very well." A wave of power pulsed through the air, making me choke on my breath and my heart skip a beat. A blood red aura surrounded the relic in my hands, and I instantly let go of it as Lord Kil'jaeden pulled it up to his eye level. I hazarded a glance up and saw him clench a fist around it, making the artifact vanish in his enormous grasp. "You have, however _ tenuously,_ succeeded. Phase one is complete. Rise."

I did, and managed to work up enough nerve to ask permission for a question. "M-my Lord, if I may ask you a question?"

He glanced down at me with those burning, horrible yellow eyes. "And what might this question be?"

"I-I brought you the draenic magic amplifier, as you requested. If it interests you, might I have my reward?"

This seemed to amuse the eredar lord. He let out a low chuckle. "Oh yes, of course. Your reward. How could have I ever forgotten?"

I smiled. Oh good, I'd gotten on his good side. Laughter was a good sign, yes? He'd bought my lie.

Shadow energy flickered around the hand not holding the artifact, and pure white lightning arced into me.

Then there was nothing.

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><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<strong>


	19. Chapter 19:Internal Burns

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Thanks to my beta, dharak!**

**Did you know fanfic now has a Proofread Writing button that writers can use? It's AMAZING :-D**

**Chapter published 8/23/12. Huh, tomorrow's Pluto Demoted Day. Has it really not been a planet for 6 years? Damn, time flies.**

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><p><span>Amanthe<span>

I shifted on the sick-bed. It had been three days since we returned from Outland. Selriona, Aruen and Orande had carried me through the portal, and gotten me to a healer, and the latter two had recently visited me. I'd been diagnosed with _internal_ burns, twelve of my two-dozen ribs were broken, I had internal bleeding, and a concussion. It was a miracle I survived, or rather, not a miracle, but Selriona and Aruen's combined healing powers that pulled me out of the danger zone. Even so, I was a mess.

Luckily, this was Dalaran, where magic was as common as air, and healing magic as common as dirt. Their healers had tended to me, and I would have healed myself too if it wasn't for their insistence to take it easy.

Currently I was bored out of my mind. The past few days were spent wallowing in my failure to stop Whirlgo, pondering what the Legion wanted, and groaning in pain as my ribs and concussion healed. The bleeding and the burns were the first to be healed, but the heavier injuries took a while.

The room I was in had enough beds for maybe three dozen people, but currently I was the only person occupying a bed. The room was patterned the typical purple and gold of Dalaran, and on the walls were several paintings, of Dalaran from afar, Darkshore during sunset, the flooded Thousand Needles, the list goes on. The sick bed itself was a simple white mattress pushed against the wall, with a gold and violet sheet over me as I recovered from the fever I'd gotten later on.

A healer came into the room, a human man with ever-so slightly graying hair and the beginning of wrinkles on his face, maybe in his late forties.

"Hello. How are you feeling today?" he asked.

"Well, I'm in pain if that's what you mean. Not as much as yesterday, though, so that's good."

He nodded with a shallow grunt, and placed a hand hovering over my stomach. A pale green light shone out of his hands, making my body feel warm, and then he took his hand away, placing it to my forehead. The light shone again, and he removed the hand. "I would say you're recovering very nicely. Concussion seems to have healed thanks to magic, but your ribs are still mending, they still have a few small fractures. If all goes well, you can probably be out of here by late at night tomorrow."

I smiled at the good news, but then the bad news came. "The bad news is you'll need to take it easy, and for a while afterwards. And we expect a good explanation about why you were banged up like that." He smiled warmly. "Of course, we're not going to bother you with that _now_, understand. So just rest up and heal. I'll bring you something to eat and drink. Any preferences?"

I thought for a moment. "Water and some bread, please."

He chuckled. "Kind of plain, don't you think?"

I shrugged, then winced when the motion made my chest burn. Of course. Bones are all connected to each other. Remember that. "It's what would feel good." With that, the healer left. I sighed, and relaxed into the bed.

Finally, Selriona appeared to wake up, her voice sounding in my head along with a familiar pressure behind my ears. _'Are you awake?'_

_'Yeah, I'm up. We need to talk about... _that_.'_

_'No kidding. Lets start here; what happened when you went through the portal? I can't remember ever having a headache like that.'_

_'Went both ways. I could barely hear myself think at first, but then I slowly got used to it.' _I paused. _'Well, now we know what happens if we go too far from each other. The link strains.'_

_'Yeah, and I couldn't understand you either. Every other word or something was cut off.'_

_'Must've been Outland itself. You know, nether winds and all that. You know, thinking back on it, I remember my head suddenly clearing up near the Temple. Guess that was you coming to Outland?'_

_'Hmm, seems about right.' _I turned over on to my side and continued to listen._ 'If you're wondering, I flew right across from Hellfire to Shadowmoon. Titans, it was hard.'_

_'Yeah. So, now we know what to expect if one of us goes to Outland.' _I paused. _'What about Whirlgo?'_

_'I was wondering. Fill me in on what happened?'_

_'The recording they took of the draenei meeting the naaru was only a part of their plan. The relic they took from Orgrimmar fifty-five years ago was the other part. Aruen said that the Temple has many powerful relics - '_

_'Like the one the gnome had,' _she interrupted.

I fixed the wall across from me with a glare. _' - has many powerful relics that can only be accessed by possessing several _other _artifacts. That's what the Legion was doing. First they got the last relic of Argus from Orgrimmar, then they got the recording. They sealed off Shadowmoon from the outside world and made certain that nobody knew just how dire things were inside, all to invade the Temple of Karabor. They brought both artifacts there and used them to get that magic amplifier. _That _is what they really wanted.'_

_'This is not good. I saw how powerful that... that thing was. If the Legion has something of that magnitude in their hands...'_

_'It'll be a very powerful weapon. But, there's something that doesn't sit right with me.' _I took a deep breath, steadying myself. _'The amplifier was most effective when magnifying the Light. That's its primary function. What in the world would the Burning Legion want with a device whose purpose is to amplify and release blasts of the Holy Light?'_

_'I don't think they got it for that reason. I mean, it _does_ amplify other types of magic too.'_

_'But that's the thing! Just that one artifact won't be able to turn the tide of war.'_

_'What if a pit lord used it? Or a dreadlord? Or, Titans forbid, Kil'jaeden himself?'_

I shook my head, then stopped when I realized nobody was around to see. _'No way. There's only so much power anything can hold, remember?'_

_'But we don't _know_ that limit. I mean, the Demon Soul was able to hold most of the power of four Aspects just fine! Who's to say this isn't something similar?'_

_'Even so, it won't be enough to make the Legion win. Whirlgo managed to dodge all the blasts I fired at him. Only reason I didn't manage to _fry_ him.'_

_'I don't know. I don't know, but I do know this. That artifact is going to cause us a LOT of trouble in the future. And what if there are other things like that? They seem to be taking up a fondness for the draenei's technology.'_

_'Well then we just need to make sure they don't take anything else. Another thing. Before you showed up, I got Whirlgo to give us a little monologue. That thing he took from the Temple is part of something called 'phase one'. Does that sound bad, or is it just me?'_

_'Phase one? Titans, the Legion's gearing up for another invasion. I mean, yeah, no kidding, they do nothing BUT gear up to invade us again, but... this is not good. How many more phases are there? What else is going to happen?'_

_'I don't know. I think whatever this phase one is, that it's done. I mean, the other two relics were clearly just to get this one artifact. Phase one must've been to just get the amplifier.'_

_'But why go through all this trouble? Why not destroy the Temple and get it that way?'_

_'I'm not sure that's possible. Enchanted vaults, and all that. But you raise a good point. The Legion is being very, VERY subtle with their plans. I mean, first they used the Twilight's Hammer as a front in Orgrimmar, now they had the apprentice steal. They shut off all communication in and out of Shadowmoon. This isn't like them.'_

_'Well, it makes sense if you think about it. I mean, every single time they invaded Azeroth, they _lost._ They're not used to losing, not at all. Looks like they're finally employing a strategy beyond 'bash our heads against the planet'.'_

_'That's not a good thing, Selriona.'_

_'No, it really isn't. They're up to something. I'm telling the rest of our Flight about the situation, we need to pay a lot of attention especially to the Legion. They're doing something, and we need to stop them. I'm going to ask Nalestrasza, try and drag some information out of her.'_

_'Good plan. Hey, before I forget, what gave you the idea to come after us in the first place?'_

_'When our link sort of fried itself, I was a _little_ bit worried and gave chase to you.'_

_'Glad you did, we wouldn't have made it otherwise.'_

_'Hey, anytime. Get better soon.'_

_'Thanks.'_ The link's pressure faded to nothing, and the day crawled on. I ate, I drank, I slept, I healed. Night fell, and night passed. The next day, the day I was supposed to get out, the same healer from before came in.

"Elizabeth Brown, you have a visitor."

I sat up. Oh? A man stepped into the room, and I sighed. "Hello, Ian."

"Hey. How're you feeling?"

"A lot better," I told him. I looked over to the healer. "May we, um, be left alone?"

"Oh yes," he said, backing up. "Of course." He left through the door connecting my room to the rest of the clinic.

I spread out my arms. "Welcome to my humble abode. I thought you were still in Outland, talking to the Netherwing?"

He sat down on the bed to my right. I noticed he had a little scar, the size of my thumb, under his left eye shaped like a scar. That hadn't been there before. "I was."

"I take it they didn't exactly greet you with open arms?"

He scoffed, speaking in hushed Draconic. "Oh, not at all. Especially not one 'touched by the dark magic of our selfish father'. They really see themselves as orphans, abandoned by Neltharion. And they _weren't_ happy to see me, considering, I don't know, the first of our kind killed many of theirs and ate their essence?"

"First impressions?" I asked in the same language with a light smile.

"Titans, tell me about it. I got them to stop _attacking_ me, but I didn't want to put in all the time to get them to warm up to me. You know, the Netherwing are very much into isolationism."

"Can you blame them?" I winced as the slight pain in my ribs flared.

He shook his head. "No, no. Not at all. Doesn't mean I have to like it though."

"Alright, but how did you get back here so quickly?"

He smiled, grin too big for his face. "What, you think a group of dragons half _made_ of the Twisting Nether weren't willing to open a portal just to get me and my 'clinging, burning fire' to go away?"

"Careful there, Ialion. Your ego will make Dalaran crash," I told him. His smile deflated. "You're being proud of not being wanted so much they gave you a portal. I'm not sure that's a _good_ thing," I finished.

"Hmmph," he said, raising his nose up, unintentionally drawing attention to the dark circles under his eyes, a tribute of all mortal-formed Twilights. "If you're going to be like that, I'll just leave."

I shrugged. "Go ahead, it's not like I'm getting out of here today or anything." A silence passed between us for a few minutes, neither of us thinking of anything to say.

"What happened to Aruen and Orande," he finally asked.

"Well, from what I saw Orande captured the soul of one of those eredar we fought." Ialion wordlessly nodded. "They carried me here and turned me over to the healers. They stopped by yesterday, we had a chat about the _incident._"

"Yeah, I'm worried about that too. What did you decide about it?"

"They're going to go talk to the rest of their guild, tell them the situation and decide what to do from there. I don't know what they'll do, but..."

He growled. "They better not reveal our Flight's home..."

"Relax, I made sure to tell them that. The Liberality Confederacy will probably know all about us, but they won't tell anybody else. They're honorable like that."

He crossed his arms and his legs, still sitting on the bed. "Good. Another thing, I thought I'd tell you. I'm leaving Dalaran."

"Oh?" I asked, raising an eyebrow. "Where to?"

"The other side of the Dark Portal. Asphyxion's watching one side, I'll watch the other, for when something inevitably slips by him. Like that wretched gnome did."

I nodded. "Good idea. I don't know if I'll stay here, either. But I probably will. I mean, as far as I know I'm the only one of us here." I frowned. "Gonna need a new job, though. I think I overstepped the one month I said I'd be gone."

He scoffed. "Actually, you've got a few days left. You know, I think I'll leave you to your healing. Ever go to Hellfire, say hello."

I smiled. "I will. See you around." He was already turned around and leaving. I sighed, relaxing back into the bed. The rest of the day passed in excruciating boredom, until the same healer once again returned, late at night.

After quickly checking up, he nodded. "Alright, you seem to be well enough to be let out of our care. However, you'll have to take it easy for one month, and come back every week for a check-up. And no using magic during this time." I frowned. "Now, before I let you go, you'll have to answer me a few questions. How exactly did you get so hurt?"

I'd expected this, and already had a story made up. "I got attacked by a dragon," I said, which was true enough. Technically the dragon had attacked an eredar which then moved the attack to me, but he didn't need to know _that. _"I was messing around in Outland, and I met one. It wasn't happy to see me."

"Mmhmm. I see. And what exactly where you doing in Outland?"

Without skipping a beat, I answered, "Looking for my cousin, he was supposed to come to a family reunion, and he didn't. Found him, turned out he didn't get the message. Then I got blasted. Lucky thing those others were around me at the time."

He nodded, but didn't look entirely satisfied. I had no doubts he'd try to push me during my checkups. "Alright then. You're free to go. Take care of yourself, and please don't meddle in the affairs of dragons."

"Oh, believe me, I've learned." Inside, I smiled. Oh, he had _no_ idea. I slowly pulled myself off the bed, my legs shaking slightly from under-use, but I could stand without too much effort. "Thank you for helping me," I said.

He shook his head. "Well, what were we going to do, just let you bleed your insides up? Remember, take it easy."

"I will," I said, walking out of the infirmary. The streets of Dalaran were just as I remembered, purple with mages making up the majority of the population, even though most would be in their beds now that it was so late. I slowly walked my way towards the Magus Commerce Exchange, and into a greenhouse. Inside there was just one person, closing shop right at the moment, the sign for 'Closed' in his hands.

He stopped when he saw me, surprise clear in his brown eyes. "Oh, Elizabeth."

"Hey Jonathan. I'm back."

"How'd the family reunion go?"

I sighed, once again telling my alibi. "Well, my cousin lives in Outland, and he didn't get the message, so guess who the lucky person to go get him was? And also, guess how well the dragon that was around there took to me?"

He winced. "Ouch. Are you alright?"

I shrugged. "Well, I'm better now." Jonathan walked past me and hung up the Closed sign where the Open sign usually was. "How'd things go with the shop while I was gone?"

"They were okay. Good thing you're back, though, Pilgrim's bounty is _ extremely_ close now. Gonna need all hands on deck for this, but..." He hesitated, then sighed. "Listen, take tomorrow off. I want a working employee, not an injured one. I don't care if they let you out, I want you healthy."_  
><em>

I nodded. "Alright. I have someplace I need to be anyway."

He frowned. "So, what, you just dropped by to bug me?"

"To say hi! Goodbye, Jonathan."

I turned around and walked away as he called out, "See ya, Liz!"

I continued on my journey. The night slowly wore on, and I reached the Silver Enclave, retracing me steps from nearly a month ago. I walked up to a house and, not knowing if the occupant was asleep or not, knocked on it. After a few minutes passed I prepared to leave, try again tomorrow, when the door opened.

A lightly tan, wrinkled face gazed out at me. His gray eyes were lidded, indicating I'd probably woken him up from sleep. His short white hair made a sort of frame around his face, like a painting. He grunted when he saw me. "What the hells are you doing, waking me up at this time - "

"May I come in?" I asked him quietly.

"Mrr? Yeah, sure," he said sleepily, shuffling out of the way to let me in. Then he closed the door behind me. I sat down at the table in the middle of the room, staring at him intently. "Hey, I think I remember you. Oh yeah, you asked me about my apprentice, a month or so ago, right?"

I frowned. I wasn't in a disguise. "Do you really not remember me?"

The Ice King frowned. "Should I remember you from somewhere else? I'm sorry, my memory isn't what it used to be."

"Samuel," I said quietly, making him jerk slightly. "I'm a terrible person."

He pulled himself to a chair in that jerking walk of his, unsteadily sitting down. "How do you know my name?"

"Whirlgo revealed it, before he got away." I put my head in my hands, looking at him across the table's corner. "You really don't remember me?" I frowned. "I'm not surprised. Titans, why didn't I write? Why didn't I contact you? Fifty years, damn it!"

He froze, staring at me. He leaned forward, steely eyes now scrutinizing. Finally, he spoke in a halting voice. "A-man-the?" I nodded silently, biting my lip. All of a sudden I jerked my hand back in pain, looking at the web of frost covering it. "Half a century, Amanthe. You were gone for _half a century._" Samuel's face darkened with anger, and tendrils of frost magic pulsed furiously around his hands.

"I know, I know!" I said, wishing I could just crawl into a hole and _die._ The embarrassment... but I deserved it, didn't I? "I'm so sorry. I always just kept telling myself I'd write you later, and later turned into tomorrow, into next week, into a year, and into decades. Gods, Samuel, I am _so sorry._"

"You look just like you used to," he said scathingly, glaring at me, but the ice around his hands diminished "How?"

I licked my mouth, hoping to offset how incredibly _dry_ my throat was. "You remember Selriona, right?"

Samuel thought for a moment, clearly plundering the depths of his memory for the name. A look of comprehension dawned on his face. "Yes, yes. Last I saw her, she and her mate stopped by my house. Asked me something about a... capacitor! That's what it was."

I nodded. "Yeah, her. Well, I'm her Dragonsworn. She figured out a spell to freeze aging, and told me." I brightened. "If you want, I could teach it to you."

Samuel shook his head. "No, no. Why would I want to freeze my aging _this_ late? Maybe if you'd found me earlier," he said, anger creeping back into his voice. I lowered my head in shame. All my fault... all my fault he's gotten so old. I could've helped him. But I forgot. In the aftermath of the Cataclysm, in all the craziness since joining the Twilight Dragonflight, my brother fell through the cracks of my mind, with nothing more than occasional thoughts about how he must be doing that never really succeeded to stop my procrastinating.

He continued. "Amanthe... you understand, I'm angry at you." I cringed. "You're my sister, and you just forgot about me like that?"

"Not completely!" I protested. "I thought about you, but I always just told myself I'd contact you later, that I'd get around to it in the future. Oh by the Light, I'm such an idiot..."

He chuckled, the sound low and gravely. "You always did have a problem with procrastination. I can't stay mad at you, you're my sister." Some sister I was. He reached out a wrinkled hand and put it on my hand. Light, and we were the same age? "Listen, the important thing is that you're here. I've been very worried about you, you know. I thought you'd died while in the Argent Crusade. Come on, let's catch up."

I raised an eyebrow. "Aren't you sleepy?"

"Bah! I can sleep when I'm dead." A venomous voice in my mind hissed, _not too far in the future. _"Tell me, what's it like? The Dragonsworn life?"

I shrugged. "We're basically watchers, distributing ourselves all over Azeroth to catch corruption before it can spread too far. My first mission was in Orgrimmar. I found the Twilight's Hammer there and spied on them. They were planning to attack Orgrimmar, and I found out that their leader was actually working for the Burning Legion, manipulating the cultists. A lot of things happened, but long and short, I failed. Their leader, turns out, was Mal'ganis in disguise, and while the cult distracted Orgrimmar he went and stole a relic of the draenei."

Samuel raised an eyebrow. "The draenei? In Orgrimmar?"

I shrugged. "Well, it was the Kingslayers', so they're allowed to keep it wherever they want. So anyway, he got the relic, then got out and left the cultists to die. After that I stayed in Orgrimmar for a few more years just in case they came back. After that I went to the Undercity for a few years, where nothing happened. Afterwards I found myself in Desolace, and I had to track down a Twilight's Hammer cultist before it could deliver some message or something to her superiors. I stopped her and uncorrupted her, since she wasn't too far along, and sent her on her way once I was satisfied." I shrugged. "I did a lot of roaming, cleansing whatever corruption I could. Old God, arcane, demonic, I actually had to cleanse _void_ corruption once."

"Void? You mean like those voidwalker things?"

I nodded. "Yeah, exactly like those. Eventually, I wound up, well, here. I heard about your apprentice, and I guessed he might have arcane corruption. Turns out, he didn't. It was _demonic_ corruption." Before I could continue and start wallowing in failure, I stopped myself. "Well, that pretty much sums up my life."

He chuckled dryly. "Sounds like you've had a fun life."

I shook my head. "It's not exactly fun. Purging corruption isn't a pleasant thing. Those things tend to be... _ugly._" Like those withered tentacles I'd seen in a shattered temple in Silithus twenty-three years ago. They had been... _horrifying. _"Well, enough about me. What's your life been like?"

"Well," he said, slowly reclining in his chair, further accenting the many wrinkles dotting his face. "After the Cataclysm ended, I kept to my studies in the Mage Quarter. I... met someone."

"Oh?" I asked, intrigued. "Do tell."

He sighed, closing his eyes. "Her name was Belli. She was a mage like me, but she was better with arcane, not frost like I was." I saw the beginnings of a blush creep along his face. "Gods, I can't believe I'm discussing this with my _sister!_ But, yeah. We got married once we finished our studies, and moved to Dalaran." I smiled. "Had kids, then they grew up - " Samuel seemed to choke on his next words. "Belli... came down with a sickness." I frowned. "The Body Suffocation." My heart nearly stopped.

I knew what that disease, was, of course. It was fatal, always, never an exception. Usually it was caught early in life, around twenty years old, and it seemed to only afflict humans and dwarves. Especially humans, but even with us it's very rare, thank the Light. Body Suffocation, once diagnosed, usually ran its course in three to five years. Some people were lucky to live longer, but to date, nobody has survived more than fifteen years with Body Suffocation.

The first signs were always the same. Difficulty moving, slurred speech, weakness. After that, it progressed rapidly. Victims lost the ability to walk, the ability to move their hands in any coordinated fashion. They can't get out of bed, can't feed themselves, can barely swallow. The disease is merciless, and it strips victims of the ability to move at all, and even makes them unable to talk. In the late stages, people with Body Suffocation were completely paralyzed, able only to do nothing more than breathe, move their eyes, and use restrooms. Then the paralysis strengthens, and they lose the ability to breathe. Nobody ever survives. Many of them suffer slowly over many years, while others decide to end their misery before it can begin.

"When?" I whispered.

"Twenty one years two weeks from today."

"Samuel, I'm... I'm so sorry."

He shook his head. "It's alright, it was long ago. Our kids grew up, married, and then had kids of their own." Something twisted in me. The family I'd never had, the sacrifice I'd made to join the Twilight Dragonflight. No children, since I might need to leave at any moment. Sometimes I felt the loss was worth the gain, and sometimes I didn't. But to hear that he had a family of his own... that stung. "After Belli died, I continued to train in frost magic, and five years later," he smiled. "The Ice King took his first apprentice."

"How many have you had?" I asked. The pain in my ribs, still not fully abated, throbbed.

"Hmm, lets see. Um, ten. They're very good mages, always. I wouldn't pick them otherwise."

I smiled. "Look at us. One of us the one and only Twilight Dragonsworn, the other a frost mage of great renown."

He smiled. "Yeah, look at us. So anyway, I've had ten apprentices, and the first nine I always let out of my care after a few months. Except for Whirlgo, you see. Whatever happened to him, anyway? Did you get that draenic recording back? I'm rather proud to own it, you know."

A spear of pain stabbed through my heart, and I had to swallow again as my throat instantly turned into a desert. "He got away. Remember the relic I said Mal'ganis stole from Orgrimmar? Well, Whirlgo went to the Temple of Karabor."

"Pardon?" he asked.

I sighed. "The Black Temple. He took the recording there and used that with the other relic to, I don't know. Gain access, open a door, pick a lock, I don't know. But it let him get some sort of draenic magic amplifying device. Tried to stop him from getting it to the Legion's base. I failed. I don't have a clue about where either your recorder _or_ Whirlgo are. I'm sorry."

He frowned. "Well, I suppose the important thing is that you tried, Amanthe. Can't ask for anything more than that."

We spent the rest of the evening just catching up, Samuel telling me about the various things he'd done during his training, or during his ongoing time as the Ice King. Of course, it made sense _my_ brother would call himself a king. As he told me that, I told him some of my more interesting attempts trying to slow down Azeroth's corruption, but sometimes when he asked me a question I'd have to tell him, 'I can't tell you that', because of Verthelion's insistence that the Cataclysm was too recent for the mortal world to know yet. I didn't understand, but fifty years was a lot more to _me_ than to a dragon.

"Can you show me?" he finally said.

"Show you what?"

He made a gesture with his hands towards me. "Twilight fire. I wanna see if you're just pulling my leg."

I shrugged. "Alright." I held a hand up and focused, calling up a small amount of the chilling, slimy fires. I let them sit in my open palm for a moment before I closed that hand and released the magic, lest I overexert myself. "What do you think?"

"That looks creepy."

I tilted my head to the side for a moment. "I've had a lot of time to get used to it." I instantly winced when the words left my mouth, feeling they'd bring up an awkward situation about our age difference. "Can I see one of your spells?"

Samuel seemed to think for a moment. "Alright. Look behind you."

I did, when a massive icicle shot out of the ground. I yelped in surprise when smaller spikes began to radiate from its tip, before the entire thing vanished. I turned back to Samuel. The wrinkles on his face seemed deeper, and his white hair seemed dull gray. "I know that spell. Whirlgo tried to hit me with it once."

Fury etched across his face. "He did _what?_ I specifically told him that spell is ONLY to be used when fighting some sort of mechanical enemy, like a gnomish robot, or a steam tank. Use that against a _person?!_ Light, what was he thinking?"

I yawned. "What time is it?"

Samuel hummed for a moment. "I think it's around three in the morning."

"What? It's tomorrow already? Oh damn it, I got to sleep, I have - actually, no I don't," I said, remembering I'd been told to take the day off. "Nevermind. Anything else you want to talk about?"

He shook his head. "No, I'm good. We should talk again, Amanthe."

"Yeah. I swear to all the powers that exist, Samuel, I'll meet you every day. Right after I go to sleep."

He snorted, pulling himself out of his chair with extreme difficulty. "Hrrm. That sounds like a good idea. Goodbye, sis'," he said, taking slow, shuffling steps off towards another room.

I stood from my chair, legs stiff from sitting there so long, and walked towards his door. "See ya, Samuel." I walked out of his room, and headed towards my home. Once inside, I stopped infront of my bed, then growled. I went to the chest pushed up against the far end of the wall, on the opposite end from my bed, and undid the locks, both magical and physical before taking out the Puzzle Box. Its eye still seemed to look at me no matter where I stood, a very creepy optical illusion. I fiddled with the locks and clasps, moving hidden ledges into place trying to open it, but to no avail. Even worse, as I did, I felt a growing pressure on my skull, and I felt like something was _watching_ me. Finally, the sensations grew too much and I forced myself to put the box down, probably even further from being solved than before.

_"It is standing right behind you... do not move... do not breathe..."_

The hairs on my neck stood straight on end. I completely froze, knowing that it wasn't true, but I couldn't help but wonder _what if something really_ is_ behind me? I don't want to die! _Finally, I overcame the fear and stuffed the box back into its chest, locked it, flopped on my bed, and passed out.

My last conscious thought was that it was nice to have my brother back, warmth that wasn't from my still-injurd ribs blossoming in my chest. But the very next day, there would sad news on the streets of Dalaran. That the Ice King's heart had given out during his sleep, and he was dead. To this day, I still blame myself, or more accurately, I blame the box. I know it's probably just the unease-inducing aura the puzzle-box has, but...

I still believe that, somehow, trying to open that box _killed_ Samuel.

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><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<strong>

**And so concludes Section 2. The Legion's plans are heating up, and this 'Phase One' is complete. Just WHAT are they up to? We'll find out more the next Section, which, as I said before, will have characters from before return. None of the Section changes completely hit the reset button, don't worry. All the same, if the style of multiple Sections is displeasing, please let me know.**


	20. Chapter 20:Family Friend

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Massive thanks to my beta, dharak.**

**Chapter published 9/2/12.**

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><p><strong>Section 3:Last Sivering<strong>

One-hundred thirty six years, four months, five hours, ten minutes, and thirty-one seconds after the epilogue of Coup de What?

Amanthe

Running. I didn't know where I was running from, or where to, but I knew that I had to run.

Leaves and branches smacked my face angrily as I fled through the forest, the unholy roaring of some manner of beast behind me seeming to grow louder and louder, but never actually increasing in volume.

I panted heavily and swore as a branch drew blood from my cheek, pumping my legs faster and faster. As I ran I saw that the path ended in a wall of trees, but even as I closed in a deep whine filled the air, causing the trees to grow and twist, until a massive, impassable wall of black metal spires stuck out of the ground in their place. I skidded to a halt and swerved to the right, avoiding the bubbling green liquid flowing from their bases. I gasped for breath and jumped over branches that suddenly turned into heavy coils of black iron. As soon as I landed the jump I ducked, a bolt of electricity from the iron rod sailing over me.

Black metal spires rose up around me, forming a canyon that I found myself in before I could avoid it. A bright light was at the end, but it was _so_ far. A metal spike erupted from the canyon, and I ducked under it, passing through the hole -

A flash of light. A different scene.

A funeral in a park. Purple and gold walls on all sides. A small gathering, despite the body's popularity; he had only invited a few people in his will. His will had given his name out to the public, and I showed up, of course, to my brother's funeral. A tall man with black hair and green eyes stood up, speaking words about his father. I couldn't find it in myself to go up and say anything, much less show my identity. I'd only just gotten back together with him... it was so unfair.

The coffin sank into the ground, and for the first time in over half a century, I genuinely wondered if being immortal was worth it.

Back to running. The deep growl of whatever was chasing me was undoubtedly louder, my predator closing in on me. I dashed through the canyon of black twisted metal, several triangular pyramids of the stuff growing out of the walls to bar my path. I ducked and jumped past them, but more simply sprung up in my path, even as I closed in on the light at the end.

Something lashed out and tripped me by my feet, making me fall to the ground with a thud. The moment my face met the cold, blackened earth the scene changed.

Far, far beneath the earth, so far below. Nothing but solid granite touching me on all ends, but my awareness stretches so high above. Hatred... evil... malice... madness... slowly reaching upwards. Slowly increasing my influence.

I continue to run forward, gasping for breath. Metal spires appeared in a flurry to try to stop me, but I simply run up them like a staircase, ascending higher. Now, I'm above the light I was running to, but so high above. A fall would break my legs. A noise, half growl and half roar, sounds right behind me, and I jump, falling down to the orb of blinding light. _CRACK!_

The starry expanse of night stretched around me in all directions, and before me was Azeroth. The oceans were gone, revealing a dark gray expanse of bedrock, mottled with light gray. The continents were still recognizable, but only in shape. Northrend was utterly devoid of snow, Stranglethorn Vale lacked the forests it was famous for, and Un'goro lacked the little dot of red light in its middle. As I watched massive ravines tore open on the surface, heavy black tentacles sliding out from them. The tentacles were spiked, and exploded from all directions at once, tearing Azeroth apart as they constricted about the surface. Some of them swung around, towering higher than any mountain, even as the world's surface continued to fracture and tear, exposing a molten core in the middle.

I'd made it. I reached the light that was at the end of the canyon, but my legs were broken, I couldn't see, and my legs just hurt so much.

The white light faded, and now I was in a little wooden shack, out in the middle of the woods. I looked out of the windows, only to find that a heavy black mist surrounded the entire house, making it impossible to look outside, and some of the dark fog seeped in under the wooden door, making the locks rattle under its force.

The room, indeed the only room in the shack, was only large enough for one bed and a nightstand. Sitting on the bed was a six-year-old human. She had brown hair tied in a ponytail behind her, and wore a yellow nightgown. She looked up at me, and my breath caught in its throat. She had a few freckles, and a hawkish nose, but what really stood out were her _eyes._ Pure black, swallowing all light the lamp on the nightstand gave out. She just held me gaze with her soul-less eyes, and as I watched a little light formed in the middle of her dark eyes. As it grew the door's rattling grew louder and louder. The light revealed itself to be a rolling see of flame, until her eyes were orbs that looked like a raging forest fire. At that moment the door collapsed in with a deafening crash, splintering into a thousand pieces, and that black fog poured in, flooding the house in no time, taking the air out of my lungs -

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><p>I jerked upright in my bed, gasping for breath, my covers falling off. I patted my head, my sides, my legs, completely convinced that a black mist was choking me. I rolled off my bed and fell on the wooden floor with a short cry of pain, then scrambled to my feet, hair falling into my face. I glanced at my clock. Seven in the morning. I had an hour until I had to go.<p>

I brushed off my nightgown, removing any dust that had gotten on it while I was on the ground. Alright. I turned around my room and headed towards my closet, picking out clothes for the rest of the day; a blue shirt and purple skirt. I looked over at a table, the Puzzle-box sitting there, eye facing towards the wall. I'd tried to open it yesterday at night, and I was... _rewarded_ with that nightmare. I knew that I should just rid myself of the thing, but I didn't. After all, everything had a solution. The harder it would be to open that box, the more rewarding it would be when I finally _did_ open it. I walked out of my room and went downstairs, getting some bread out of the closet and smearing some jam on it, sitting down at the table with a glass of cold milk. I sighed.

My home, my _real_ home. The home I'd lived in so long ago, before I'd left with Selriona to go join the Argent Crusade. It had taken some reconstructing, but it was my home again, with the living room below, a staircase leading up to the second floor, with my bedroom and a guest room. Stormwind hasn't changed all that much in the many years since the Cataclysm. There were new houses, and the ramparts had improved defenses for when the Horde attacked _eventually_, such as more ballista and cannons. The gnomes had managed to slowly incorporate some of their technology, like their new, hundred-times safer Deeprun Tram after the old one had collapsed for the _seventh_ time. But overall, there wasn't much change.

Once done with my breakfast_,_ I checked the time again. Seven thirty. Still enough time to check in on my... well. Long story.

I left my house, keys in hand, and locked the door behind me. The skies were overcast, but the sun pierced through the heavy, low-lying clouds enough to hurt my eyes if I looked in its direction.

I walked out of Old Town, making my way towards the Trade District, or more specifically, the canals _around_ the Trade District. I searched around for the person I was looking for, until I found, sure enough, a man laying on the brick tiles. He had angular cheek-bones, dirty blonde hair and dark green eyes. He wore tattered, faded brown rags, and he snored lightly. I poked his side with my foot. He stirred once, opened his eyes, and groaned, pulling himself to his feet.

"Ey, is it that time of day already, mon? What you be doing, disturbing ma sleep?"

"It _is_ that time of day. Come on, I have to go to my job soon, so we have very little time."

He nodded, rubbing his eyes with his fists. I turned around and began leading Mig'jan to our designated safe room, where we could discuss things in safety, without the fear of Stormwind's increasingly totalitarian governing body clamping down on us.

The safe room wasn't much to look at; just a secluded little room in the Trade District, impossible to notice if you don't know it's there. It's surrounded by taller buildings, perfectly obscuring it. The room itself was barely large enough to live in, but that was fine, since we weren't here very often. A few errant cobwebs covered the corners, but I swatted them away irately, closing the door behind us and locking it from the inside.

Mig'jan pulled something out of his ruined pants, a small purple and golden orb, and began to rub one hand over it. As he did, his clothes shifted and merged, regrowing, healing. Once done, he no longer wore faded, filthy brown rags, but a rich, clean leather button-up shirt and pants.

I nodded to the disguised troll. "Alright, have you heard anything in Stormwind's underground?"

He shook his head. "Not too much, nah. Nobody's happy with those nobles, parading around and taking the king's power from him. But nobody's too willing ta _do_ anything about it, mon."

I frowned. "Well, keep your ears sharp. Rule of thumb, corrupt governments attract corrupt organizations."

"Think we might see, ya know, the Hammer?"

I slowly shook my head, answering just as fast. "I... don't... think so, no. The Hammer's hurting, you know, with our Flight hunting them down relentlessly. They're trying to rebuild, but nothing's coming out of it."

Mig'jan rubbed his forehead. "Ya, nothing. All we can do is keep them bottled up, doesn't look like we're doing too much ta really stomp 'em out. Anything in the Cathedral, mon? Gotta know if those holy folk know something, ya know?"

I sighed, leaning against a dusty wall. A floorboard under me creaked. "There's nothing in the Cathedral. I'm not too far up on their ladder, yet. But I don't think there's anything either trying to corrupt them - ha, good luck! - or anything corrupt that they really know about. Specifically, I mean."

The shaman nodded. "Ya, I know what ya mean. Well, if this little checkup's done, _I_ have ta go back ta the underground, fish around for any dirt." He raised two fingers to his forehead and saluted me. "See ya 'round, 'manthe," he said, turning around and leaving the safe room. Now I had to wait a few minutes before also leaving; two people leaving an alley was a lot more suspicious than one, and since the guard had arrested that couple for leaving a dark alley last week, we weren't taking any chances.

I reclined against the wall. It was actually pure coincidence Mig'jan and I were both in Stormwind at the same time. I'd moved here for personal reasons, and Mig'jan... well.

He had been a soldier of the Horde, in the non-stop war between the Alliance and the Horde, which by this point had gone on for so long all the other factions simply shook their heads at the two. In fact, the civilians of both factions were also tired, and began to leave, so both factions were hemorrhaging their populations. Mig'jan had been part of a Horde unit in the Twilight Highlands when they were ambushed by Alliance forces. He had been taken captive, and that was where he met Pallasion.

The acrophobic dragon had been undercover as a rank-and-file soldier for the Alliance. When he had a chance alone with Mig'jan, he gave Mig'jan an offer; he would free the troll in exchange for obedience. Of course, the shaman didn't know Pallasion was a dragon _at the time_, but once they'd escaped through the twilight realm he learned everything, and he'd been sent to Stormwind to help keep track on it. Selriona told me about her mate's Dragonsworn through our link. Needless to say, _what a coincidence._ My best friend's second mate's Dragonsworn is in the same place as I am, which also happens to be the place I lived for much of my early life. But, when one's lived as long as I have, such things are bound to occasionally happen. As it was now, Mig'jan kept an eye on Stormwind's underground, and I kept my ears to the Cathedral, in case they knew anything. Not to mention that I felt it was high time I finished my training as a priestess, however many years I was overdue.

But today, I didn't have any training, or any business in the Cathedral at all, for that matter. I waited another few minutes, then deemed it was safe to leave the room. I made sure to take the key with me, and lock it from the outside.

Now that I'd done the daily check-in with Mig'jan, I had somewhere to be. I took off, heading for my destination, a little home also on the outskirts of the Trade District. It was a large home, as far as they went. It had two levels, and two windows for each. I walked up to the wooden door and knocked three times. A moment later it opened, revealing a middle-aged woman's face, the rest of her clothed in brown leather that was fire resistant; it had to be for where she was going. She also had a black leather purse slung over her left shoulder. Her brown hair was sprinkled with very small amounts of gray, the beginnings of wrinkles surrounding her brown eyes. She smiled.

"Ah, Amanthe, so good to see you. Please, come in, come in," Anastasia said, ushering me in. I walked in, and she closed the door behind me. The room I was in was quite small, maybe two by two meters, but three doorways branched off into what I knew were much larger rooms. To the left was the living room, to the right was a hallway that looped around to the kitchen, and in front of me was a stairwell that led to the second floor. "Derek and I were just getting ready to leave. On time as always, I see."

I smiled. "Well, how can I not be here to see - "

"Manthy, Manthy!" came a high-pitched voice. I turned to the left and saw the source of the voice coming towards me. I bent down and opened my arms for the six-year old girl to run up and hug me. I stood up and held her for a moment and looked at her.

"Hey, Anna! How've you been?" I asked, placing the white-haired girl down.

Before she could answer, a man appeared in the hallway to the right, wearing the same clothes as his wife, minus the purse. His hair was much more gray than Anastasia's, but still clearly brown. His dark skin was covered in a few cuts from what I knew from conversation were the result of various hunting... _accidents._

His green eyes stared at me intensely, and he gave a small smile. "Amanthe, so great to see you. We were just getting ready to go to work."

"Ah, you know me. Anna is so _cute_," I said, kneeling down to the girl with pinkish eyes.

Anastasia knelt next to her daughter. "Bye, Anna," she said, kissing her once on each cheek. Derek repeated the movement, both of the adults then walking out to go to their jobs. I smiled. _They_ were why I'd come to Stormwind. Anastasia Lockliss, but her maiden name was Sivering.

Samuel's descendants. More specifically, Anna was my brother's great-great-great-granddaughter. Anastasia didn't remember me, but I remembered _her_ from when she was younger.

"Alright Anna," I asked once her parents had gone off to their business. "What do you want to do today?"

"Umm, hide and seek!"

I smiled. "Alright. I'll count to ten!" I closed my eyes and turned towards the door, counting aloud. "One, two, three..." I heard her feet against the floorboards as she ran for a hiding spot. "Four, five, six..." Being a babysitter _wasn't_ a particularly lucrative job, but at over one hundred and sixty years old, I'd accumulated quite a bit of wealth, so I could afford to keep watch on what was left of my family.

"Seven, eight, nine, ten! Here I come!" I said, opening my eyes. I turned down the hallway to the right, passing by a restroom. The corridor turned to the left, and I followed it into the dining room. In the middle of the dining room was a rounded rectangle of a table, with a lamp hanging over it to give light. The table had one chair at each end, and two chairs on each side. There was a little girl hiding under the chair, but I pretended not to know that.

I put a hand on my chin, pretending to be stumped. "Hmm, where did she go?" I headed off, ignoring the almost-inaudible giggle, towards the left into the kitchen, then across a doorway into the living room, effectively going in a circle. I went back to the dining room, approached the table with deliberate slowness, then suddenly knelt to her eye-level. "Got you!"

She squealed and backed up, climbing out from under the table. "Alright, now I'm counting!" Without further warning, she closed her eyes and began to count to ten fast, but not so fast that I couldn't duck out of her line of sight. I turned towards the stairs and clambered up them, arriving on the second floor, which was a C shaped hallway around the stairwell. Several rooms branched off this one, but the one I hid myself in was a small, cramped closet full of bedsheets. I closed the door on me, no small feet considering the lack of space, and waited.

Almost a moment later, I heard Anna coming up the steps.

While she was still searching, I let my thoughts wander. Ialion was watching over the Outland side of the Dark Portal, still. His mate, Charoliona, was the keeper for the Amethyst Shrine up in Dragoblight. My thoughts continued to wander, on to Stormwind's political situation.

Political corruption technically _wasn't_ part of the Flight's charge, but it tended to sort of open the gate for other types to enter. So far there didn't seem to be anything happening, though, which was good. Stormwind might just escape any real trouble. I'd seen a few cities rise and fall in my time. The retaking of the Undercity, the leveling of Gilneas, the goblins launching some sort of massive bomb across the ocean towards Ironforge, only for it to do nothing. Stormwind's time seemed to be up this time. The king was strung up in a web of paperwork and power-shifts, and the nobles were having fun increasing taxes on Stormwind's civilians, and were cracking down _hard_ on any criticism.

All in all, Mig'jan, who'd become something of an apprentice to me, and I were ready to abandon ship as soon as the position got untenable. But until then, remain vigilant.

The door opened, light flooding into the closet. "Found you!"

I feigned surprise. "Oh no! How did you find me?" I asked, coming out of the closet.

"I saw your feet below the crack on the door!" she said, smiling at her cleverness.

The rest of the day passed on with us playing several games. We played tag for a while, with me letting her get me easily, and letting her escape me multiple times. We ate lunch, I watched her draw a bit, read a few stories. I appreciated all the time I could with Anna and Anastasia, the only family I had left.

After dinner, we went up to Anna's room which, like her parents', was on the second floor. She had a single window looking out into the rapidly-darkening streets of Stormwind, illuminated only by the lamp-posts and the lanterns carried by the _quite_ common guard patrols. Her room was painted pink, with a bed too large for her pushed into a corner, a blue mattress with a dark red sheet on it, and a yellow pillow. Wooden toys of all sorts, and one or two mechanical train sets, littered the floor. All in all, her room was cluttered, colorful, and everything you'd expect from a six year-old.

"Manthy, Manthy, look! I can do something new!" the young albino girl exclaimed, sitting down before me as I crossed my own legs.

I raised an eyebrow. "Really? Can I see?"

"Okay!" She opened the palm of her left hand and closed her eyes. Yellow sparks clustered around her fingertips, then rose up around a mound of hazy yellow light rising from her palm. The sparks flew around the mount a little more until the orb of Holy Light flew off into the air, twisting around into different shapes. The yellow sparks of light still surrounded it, appearing out of nowhere and being drawn into it, only to be replaced by more.

The orb of light continued to shift, until it was the form of a tiny kitten, prancing through the air on an invisible floor. It opened its mouth a few times, perhaps to mew, but no sound came out. I looked at Anna's face; her eyes were screwed shut, an unbecoming look for someone so young. I also noticed something else on her, something red.

"Whoa, whoa whoa whoa, stop!" I said, getting up and searching for something to wipe her nose with. I settled on a box of handkerchiefs and pulled one out. "Stop, stop-stop-stop." She did, the kitten made of the Light disintegrating into nothing, and her eyes opened just in time for me to place the white sheet at the trickle of blood coming out of her nose. I got her to her feet and guided the child out of her room into the restroom, turning a knob on the wash basin to make cold water start pouring out. Of course, I could always just use _magic_ to cure her nosebleed, but I had a feeling that as she grew up, she'd be doing a lot of magical healing on her own. Why use magic for such trivial things as a nosebleed?_  
><em>

I got some paper towels, and twisted one into a small rope that I soaked in cold water from the faucet and draped around her neck. I took another and folded it several times, soaked it as well, and placed it along the bridge of her nose, then changed the handkerchief for a fresh one. I threw the bloodied one in the trash. Then I held the cold soaked paper on her nose and pinched it. There _was_ a method to my madness. The cold paper towels were for slowing blood flow so that the blood vessels had an easier time mending, and of course you had to apply pressure. Was it the best way to stop a nose bleed? Probably not. Was it the way my parents had taught me and it stuck with me forever after because it worked? Yep.

"Alright, it's okay Anna, just a little nosebleed. Try not to do that for so long again, alright?"

"Oakey, Menthy," came her voice, distorted by the virtue of being unable to breathe through her nose. I counted to sixty in my head, then switched the bloodied tissue for a fresh one, throwing the other one out. "Did yoo like it, Menthy?" she asked.

I nodded to her. "Yeah, Anna. That was really good. You didn't show anyone else though, did you?"

She shook her head. "Unh unh. Jest like yoo told me." I had the good fortune to be the first to discover that Anna had _ unprecedented_ skill with the Holy Light. But if word got out about that, then she would be taken into special training, made to use her gift for things she shouldn't know exist yet. Her childhood would be gone. So I'd told her not to tell anyone, that when she was older she could decide what to do with her gift. She had a great future ahead of her, of that I had no doubt. But to have it forced on her... she was six years old, for Titans' sake!

I waited another minute and switched again. "Well, the good news is the bleeding's stopping." I took off the paper towels from her nose and neck, re-soaked them, then put them back. This routine continued a little while longer until I deemed the blood on new sheets to be residual blood from before instead of new blood, and gently guided her back to her room, carefully so that the blood vessels in her nose wouldn't tear open again. Once I closed the door to her room, I guided her to sleep. "Alright, you should probably get some rest, let your nose heal up."

She frowned. "But I haven't brushed my teeth yet, or - "

"Alright, alright." I spun her around and opened the door, carefully guiding her back there. She let some water flow from the faucet and got a brush from a drawer, then brushed her teeth. Once done, she let me bring her back to her bed and tuck her in.

"Can I have a story?" she asked.

I nodded and sat down next to her. "Alright. What should it be about?"

Anna thought about it for a moment. "I don't know. You make it up!"

I turned my head sideways for a moment, then smiled, coming up with a story. "Alright. Here's a story. Once upon a time, there was a young woman. This young woman had an interesting life. When she was a baby, she was kidnapped from her mommy." Anna gasped, but I'd long since learned what was the limit of things she could listen without disturbing her. "She was raised in a different place with a lot of other little kids, but they didn't see things as you and I do. They thought that good people were bad, and bad people were good, because that's what they were always told, and they didn't think it could be any other way."

"What was her name?"

"Hmm... Samantha. Anyway, one day, when Samantha was fifteen years old, she got lost from the other people she'd grown up with. She couldn't find them again. She was very afraid."

"What happened?"

I smiled, and continued to relate a certain someone's story in a very disguised fashion. "She started thinking, and she realized that good people weren't bad, and bad people weren't good. This made her sad, because she and the others she'd grown up with were famous for hurting good people, thinking they were bad. But nobody knew that they thought good people were bad, everyone thought _they_ were bad people. Samantha ran away."

I licked my tongue over my lips before going on. "Samantha eventually came to a little town, and there she met a woman called Amy. Samantha wore different clothes than she usually did, so nobody knew who she was."

"That's really smart of her," Anna interrupted.

I smiled at her. Her eyes were blinking a lot more. She was falling asleep. I continued. "Samantha and Amy became good friends really fast. Like Samantha, Amy was just passing through the town. They went back to the city Amy lived in, but along the way, Amy found out who Samantha really was." My great-great-great-grandniece gasped. "Amy thought that Samantha was a bad person. After all, she'd hurt lots of good people before. But she quickly told Amy she wasn't a bad person, and that she used to think they were bad people. Amy didn't believe this, but let Samantha stay in her home anyway, since she had nowhere to go."

"Amy sounds really niiIIIIIAAaace," Anna said, 'nice' being distorted by a yawn. She giggled when she realized how silly she'd sounded.

I blushed in spite of myself, and bit down the urge to say _Thanks._ "Well, Samantha was nice to her while they were going to her home. Anyway, Samantha lived in the city for a while with Amy, until eventually they had to leave."

"Why did they have to leave?" she murmured.

"It's a long story," I told her. "Maybe I'll tell you later. So anyway, the two of them went north. Amy and Samantha went their separate ways. Samantha went back to her old friends to let them know that good people aren't bad, and bad people aren't good. Amy went to go help stop the real bad people with a lot of good people."

"Amy went with the other good people to where the bad people were trying to do something very bad..." I left off when I noticed that she'd since fallen asleep. Silently, I removed myself from her bed, leaving her tucked in. I left her room, keeping the door open, and went downstairs to where there was still light. For a few minutes I waited on a chair in the living room, until the doorbell rang. I leaped from my chair and went to go open the door, looking at the tired faces of Anna's parents.

"Hey," I said to the two, exhausted from their long work days at the Dwarven District.

"Where's Anna?" asked Derek, suppressing a yawn. Not surprising. It _was_ eight-o'-clock at night.

"She's upstairs in her bed, sleeping."

"I hope she wasn't a trouble?" asked Anastasia, my second living descendant, as the two of them entered their home, closing the door behind them.

I shook my head. "Oh no, no trouble at all. She had a nosebleed not long ago, but I stopped it. Nothing big."

Anastasia sighed. "Oh no, _again?_ Well, thank you for taking care of her." She slung over her purse and fished about in it, before handing me forty dollars.

"Really, it's no trouble," I said, taking the money and placing it in my pocket. "She's wonderful to be around." _Just like you when you were her age. _I nodded to them. "Well, see you on Monday, then."

"Goodbye," the two of them said after me. I gave them a wave of my hand, opening the door with the other, and then I was out on the streets of Warfang. The guards were out on patrol, and while there wasn't exactly a designated time for everyone to go home, they _did_ act more aggressive when it was night. I experienced this not five minutes after leaving the home of the Locklisses, when a guard stopped me.

"Halt," he said, the noise tinny from inside his white helmet. "What business do you have out so late?"

"I'm heading back to my home, I was babysitting just now."

"Any proof to back up the claim? How do I know you're not just some criminal?" His left arm twitched towards the sword on his belt, and I found myself briefly wondering if I'd need to borrow Mig'jan's Orb of Deception soon.

I rolled my eyes, but under cover of night he didn't notice. Or he didn't show it, anyhow. "I am Amanthe Eldragon of the Cathedral of Light, a priestess there. The Archbishop can vouch for me."

The guard held my gaze, then nodded. "I shall go ask him now. Light's blessing," he said, walking past me, almost shouldering me aside with his pauldrons.

"Light's blessing," I muttered bitterly once he was out of earshot, continuing to my home. Fortunately, I wasn't stopped for the rest of the trip back to my home in Old Town, and I slid into my home in relief. I washed myself, then put on a dark purple nightgown, and collapsed in my bed.

Tomorrow I'd have discipline training. Crap.

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><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<strong>


	21. Chapter 21:Lich Legacy

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Massive thanks to my beta dharak!**

**Chapter published 9/12/12**

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><p><span>Amanthe<span>

I gritted my teeth in pain. This was never easy.

_Come on, Amanthe. Mind over matter._ _Discipline._

Discipline training was always worth it in the end, of course. It was that training that allowed me to form shields out of the Light, for instance. To discipline myself enough to control the power of the Light as it flows through me into more complex spells than simple healing. But _this!_

"Focus, Amanthe," came someone's voice in the distance. "_Focus._"

_I'm trying!_ I shouted mentally. The Light burned in my veins, molten fire enveloping my body. I growled, forming the spell with pain-staking slowness. At last, I thought it was done and, still enduring the agony of holding onto the Light for too long, cast the spell.

I sighed in relief as my body relaxed. A shell of Holy Light, large enough for maybe a dozen to crowd under it, opened up on the Cathedral's floor. I smiled, but at that moment the barrier flickered, then shattered like glass.

I growled in aggravation. _So close!_

From near the walls of the small room I trained in, my mentor clucked his tongue. "Almost got it. Your barrier ran out of energy too soon."

"Most of the Light ran out of me by the time you said I could cast the spell," I pointed out.

"And why did you let it? Hold on to it tighter next time." Before I could begin drawing on my _empty_ mana-pool, Jason stopped me, closing the distance in a heartbeat and resting a hand on my right shoulder. "I think that's quite enough. Besides, your service for today is over." Internally, I collapsed in relief. _Finally._

In the real world, I nodded. "Thank you."

Jason was a fairly handsome man, at least by my standards. He had a strong jawline and sharp nose. His left eye was a bright sky-blue, but his right eye was a dark brown with a ring of light brown in the middle of the iris. He wasn't exactly tan, but by no means was he pale. His hair was black and neatly trimmed around his head. The most noticeable feature about him, though, was how incredibly _skinny_ he was. Not so much as to be unhealthy, but enough for his hands to be bony and his ribs able to show through his skin. Whenever anyone asked him why he was like that, he just said he has a very small appetite. He was, like me, dressed in the robes of the Cathedral of the Light, white with light blue, and golden trimming around the neck and wrists.

"Oh, and just a heads up. Mrs. Manner's school group is going to be putting on a pageant for the Rise of the Lich King here in a months, and you'll probably see them practicing around here. You might be asked to help them now and again. They'll be here for practice tomorrow."

"Mrs. Manner's kids?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Yeah, why?"

"I babysit one of her students, Anna Lockliss. Huh, it's a small world, isn't it?"

"Hmm, indeed. Go get yourself something to drink, you're dehydrated."

"Alright. See you on Sunday," I said, leaving the small enclosed room I had trained in. A few winding corridors later, and I emerged into the main hall of the Cathedral of Light.

The walls stretched up over fifteen metes. Blue banners hung from the ceiling in between pillars. The walls, ceiling, and floor were all constructed out of white marble, and between the pillars separating the sides of the room from the central walkway were several candle-racks, metal rods reaching up that held five gently burning candles at their tops.

The central pathway was divided into a few sections. In the middle was a solid line of white squares, stretching up to the end of the room and to the entrance, cracked and chipped from over a century of use. To its right and left was a much smaller line of alternating white and gray stones which, while also worn down from not enough repairs, were in far better condition. And finally, further out from this checkerboard line were two rows of large blue tiles, each with one white diamond tile within. The end of the main hall, opposite from the minuscule entrance doorway, was a wide staircase covered in a blue carpet that went up to an altar. The altar was a simple wooden desk covered in hundreds of tomes dedicated to uncovering the truth through the Light. Those tomes specifically were for the Archbishop to distribute at their discretion, but the other books, hidden away in mammoth libraries elsewhere in the Cathedral, were open to all.

And of course, staring down at the altar were the massive stained glass windows. They towered above the altar, colored light flowing in from Stormwind in vibrant shades of amber, cobalt and emerald. The light shone down on the marble, making particles of dust glisten in the light.

I rolled my shoulders as I stepped into the main hallway, trying to relieve some of the tension that holding onto my magic for fucking_ half an hour_ caused. After that I cracked my neck, then my wrists, and flexed my legs. _Damn_ but discipline training was awful. Good thing I didn't have it for another two weeks.

But I liked it in the Cathedral. Here was a place untouched by the turmoils of the outside world. Here, the politics of the nobles couldn't get in, the very ground itself repelled evil beings. It had been concentrated after the issue with the Twilight Father many years ago, and still was to this day. Here was a safe haven, a place where I could come and be accepted by my fellow priests, I could train in the spells I'd been using for longer than any other. To say this place held nostalgic memories for me would be an understatement.

First joining the Cathedral as a priestess. The first time I learned how to heal someone, even if I only managed to mend a paper cut. The doubt after my first discipline class, and feeling that doubt wash away when I shielded myself with the Light for the first time. Getting approached by a shadow priestess outside the Cathedral and asking if I wanted additional training, which they wouldn't give me. Frying a kobold's mind with my thoughts...

I wiped away a tear. I'm getting sentimental in my old age. Huh.

I hurried on past the watchful eyes of the paladins on guard, even though there was never anything to guard against, and headed up a staircase. The stairs went upwards in a spiral, with me passing a few floors, before reaching my destination.

It was a balcony, looking out over Stormwind, from near the top of the Cathedral. The balcony itself wasn't very large, but it was long. Flower pots lined the walls of the Cathedral, from which blossomed Peacebloom, small bushes of Silverleaf, and a variety of other flowers I couldn't even begin to identify, nearly spilling over the edges of their pots there were so many. Green vines hung over the edges of the row of white flower pots, lightly touching the sand-textured white stone floor. A rail was all that kept me from falling over the edge. The rail was intricately designed, with white posts decorated with librams and hammers, the marble rods in between twisted to resemble a spiral.

I took a deep breath, smelling the fresh scent of pollen permeating the air. I liked it up here. The air so high up was very clean, none of the smog from the Dwarven District or the dust from _anywhere_ in Stormwind could get up here.

This was the perfect spot for meditating. It wasn't uncommon to see several people up here, just sitting and relaxing. Indeed, to my left and right there was a paladin dwarf and human respectively, identifiable from the golden armor they wore, instead of robes. I payed them no attention, instead sitting down in between them, looking out over Stormwind. I winced as my muscles protested the motion of sitting.

I closed my eyes and let my aching body relax. I relaxed my breathing, and focused on what I could feel through my sensed. Through my sense of sight, I couldn't see much. Just the endless writhing of colors on the back of my eyelids, colors that managed to be vibrant and dull at once, bright and dark together, forever twisting and flowing into shapes that sometimes formed intricate patterns, or people, or scenes, or just random jumbles of lines. Through my sense of touch I could sense the gentle caresses of wind upon my skin, my clothes touching my skin, my hair falling around my face. Through my sense of smell I could scent out the fresh mountain air, courtesy of the mountains Stormwind was built into, of the flowers behind me, the somewhat salty smell of the stone.

Through my sense of hearing I could hear so much. The gentle breathing of myself and the two paladins meditating. The whistling of the wind through the Cathedral of the Light's many spires, rustling the leaves of the flowers. The faint roar of noise flowing up to me from Stormwind far below, the combined sound of thousands of civilians milling about, selling and buying, chatting and quizzing. Pets mewing and barking, forges heating, hammers shaping. All of that and more, condensed into one single dull thrum of noise.

My muscles relaxed, and I fell into a state of meditation, gently swaying where I sat. From here, I reached within me, gently to avoid rousing myself. I touched upon my magic and, through my mana, called upon the Light. Behind my eyes the swirls of random color all fell to a central point, before glowing with a soothing yellow light. Warmth surged up my fingertips, sending gentle shivers down my spine. I welcomed the feeling, and sent my question towards the bright orb of light.

_What is the Legion planning?_

An onslaught of thoughts and feelings raced at me, catching me unprepared. But with how much I doubted to be able to glean much, I only managed to decipher a few of them. How ironic. My doubt of gaining answers through the Light made me unable to do so, fueling my doubt. Quite a cycle.

The thoughts I got were only generalized feelings. Loss, but who loses what? Fear, but who fears what? Ingenuity, but _whose? _Those were the questions. I talked myself through it, a tidal wave of information still pressing against my skull. If I could get this much through the Light, who's to say I can't get even more information?

At that moment, pictures came to me, but they were muddled and unclear, as if somebody had dumped them into a river, rubbed mud on it, rinsed it off, and then plunged it under a river before asking me to see it. A beam of yellow cutting through black. A face, but of what race and gender? A glowing green orb suspended in a dark void, against a blazing blue light.

Words. I need words. I knew there were words in the surging information around me, but my doubt held me back. I'd seen Aruen glean incredible insights through the Light. Why couldn't I do that?

Words began to trickle in. Not the well-explained _essay_ that I knew the Light had given me, but words nonetheless. They were mumbled in a deep voice, echoing as if someone spoke them to me from the other side of a vast cave.

_Lost... evil... tricked... return... kind... love... pain... sorrow..._

I mentally frowned, my body still far too relaxed to move. No, that wasn't enough. It was too general. I needed something more specific. _Why_ couldn't I get anything more specific? This was important!

I tried to open my mind to the rush of information, but my frustration did just the opposite. I lost the words and pictures, the feelings soon after. Inside my head I shouted in annoyance, and the glow of the Light vanished without a trace.

I opened my eyes. I was alone now, the two men having left. Everything was the same, except I'd lost feeling in my limbs. I began slowly moving my fingers and toes to get feeling back into them, and after two or so minutes I had begun walking back down the staircase, slowly from the exhaustion of using my magic in the meditation.

_Nothing. _The information I got from meditating amounted to _nothing._ It was all too cloudy and vague. The pictures could have been _anything_, the thoughts and feelings were meaningless outside of context. I stormed down the stairs, now in a worse mood than when I'd gone up, not to mention that everything _hurt_ again. I forced myself to take deep breaths. Easy, Amanthe. Getting mad will just make meditation harder in the future. Calm, deep breaths. That's it. Deep breaths.

I walked out of the Cathedral of the Light in silence, and made a beeline for home. Once there, after changing into my standard day-to-day clothes (A white blouse with green pants today) I searched for the specific tome I had. I let twilight fire crawl over my body, slimy and cold, before it collapsed around me and pulled me into the twilight realm with a _pop. _I held my hands out and laced my fingers together, cracking them, before heading over to the table holding my Puzzle box. Only, instead of the box, there was a tome sitting there.

The tome was actually a journal. It wasn't exactly a _heavy_ book, but by no means was it thin. The cover was an argyle pattern of bright yellow crystals against indigo. I opened it up to where a simple pencil held it open, and lifted them both up. Time for some observing.

Normally inanimate objects existed in both the physical and twilight realms at once. But with a little magical trickery, I could make the twilight realm 'think' the substances making up the pencil and books were still in their natural, living forms, so it would only be in one at a time. Books had once been made of living things. The leather for their covers and bindings, and the trees for their parchment. The wooden pencils from trees, their erasers from soy. The actual graphite of the pencil was tricky. It was not made of anything living, it just _was._ So it would appear to be a floating core of graphite, and graphite scribblings in mid-air. Scribblings somebody could _read._

Which was the reason I had bought charcoal pencils.

I walked out of my house and began to observe Stormwind through the twilight realm. First, Old Town. Not much showed up in Old Town, however there _was_ a bit of a teal glow in a back alley. Arcane corruption, surrounding a little vial on the ground. It was filled with a frothing blue liquid, the heavy smoke billowing out of it sinking to the ground, sending shadows and mist rippling away from it. I frowned, and called holy fire down upon it, annihilating the offending vial. I opened my book to the current date, May the Fifth, and wrote into it the presence of an Arcanely Corrupt vial in Old Town. I closed the book. The azure glow was already fading, and I stuck around until it was completely gone before checking to see if there were any hints at all as to who had left this here. None. I recorded that as well.

Old Town had nothing more, and the Trade District was clean. As was Stormwind Keep, thank the Light. I had a false alarm of demonic corruption in the Dwarven district, but it turned out to just be a group of glowing embers, their red glow cutting through the gloom of the twilight realm like a knife. Cathedral Square was, _as fucking always_, completely clean. There wasn't even any mist there in the twilight realm, which is saying something. I went around Stormwind, writing in my book which regions were clean, and which weren't. I found the second and final source of corruption in the Mage Quarter, in a little tavern called the Slaughtered Lamb.

Sitting at the bar, infront of a bottle of what appeared to be whiskey, was a person-sized cloud of black mist. I raised an eyebrow. Void corruption? That was rare. Lucky it was also the weakest form of corruption. The bottle floated into the air and tilted, as did many others, and the alcoholic beverage flowed out of it into the black fog, where it vanished upon presumably touching the person's tongue. It was a good thing the Slaughtered Lamb's warlocks had no demonic corruption. Warlocks were so, so susceptible to it. I wrote in the documentation of Void corruption, and came up with a plan.

I walked out of the Slaughtered Lamb, found a secluded corner where nobody was likely to be watching, and placed down my stuff. Then I pulled myself out of the twilight realm.

I walked into the Slaughtered Lamb and took in the occupants. A bartender, a few customers with hoods over their faces. Unimportant. I zeroed in on the one that was at the location of the void corruption and strode in. A few eyes turned to me, but nobody said anything. I just approached the high elf woman and pointed at her.

"You."

She looked at me from under her hood with cold, empty blue eyes. "Yes, human?" she asked quietly.

One of the others, a man of some race (I couldn't tell from the hood) spoke before I could. "Tch, what are you even _doing_ here? This isn't the place for your kind, _priest._ Turn around and just go. We don't bother you, do we?" If I hadn't known better, I'd have thought he was corrupt. But I had seen through the twilight realm, so he must just be an ass.

I turned my best glare on him. "This is actually important." I turned back to the woman. "You're corrupt." All activity in the tavern ceased. The bartender and the customers looked at me like I'd just said _I'm in love with Archimonde._

Finally she frowned. "Am I now?"

I nodded. "Yes, you are. Void corruption, to be precise. I could feel it from all the way outside. You should really get that checked out, you know. Don't want it getting worse. If you want, I can burn most of it off right now."

An emotionless grunt. "Fine. I have been feeling a bit _dull_ lately."

"Hold on!" said the same warlock. "We would know if she was corrupted!" He pointed to the far end of the tavern, to a doorway that led down. Right above the doorway was a dark red rune burned into the walls. "That ward warns us of stuff like that!"

I looked at him and clucked my tongue, already calling upon the Light to illuminate my hands. "Well then in that case, you need to place a new ward." I turned back to the high elf, who watched me with a bored expression, and cast the spell.

She let out one cry of pain as a blinding flash of holy energy enveloped her. I threw myself away from a shadow bolt, but before the fight could escalate, she spoke up. "Wait, wait." She flexed her fingers, some emotion bleeding back into her voice. "I... it feels strange. I actually feel _angry_ at you. I haven't felt angry in days." She looked at me. "I guess I _was_ corrupted. How strange. But, I guess, thank you for helping me."

"You're not done yet," I said. "You weren't very corrupted, but I can't get it all on my own. You'll need to get help from other people to remove the remaining corruption. And I'd advise you to stay away from voidwalkers."

One of the warlocks snickered. "Who are you, a doctor?"

Ignoring him, I continued. "Do you know how you may have been corrupted?"

She thought about it for a moment. "I learned how to summon my voidwalker not too long ago. When I had to subdue it to bind it to me, it must've corrupted me. I had a hard time beating it, so it makes sense."

I nodded. "Alright. Thank you for your time, farewell." I left the Slaughtered Lamb and returned to where I'd placed my book. I sunk into the twilight realm and picked up my stuff, pausing for a moment to write in the entry of the void corruption, its cause, severity, etc. Once done, I closed the book and continued on my way, stopping into the mages' tower, then the Stockades, and finally went back home. By that point the sun was setting below the horizon, my stomach growled, and I was thirsty.

Two entries of corruption, both minor. More than what usually occurred in Stormwind, but still well within the realm of normality. I placed the book and pencil back on the table and pulled myself out of the twilight realm. I grabbed something to eat and drink, downed them quickly, and returned upstairs to my room.

I collapsed back on my bed, letting my body relax after a long day of discipline training, meditation, and corruption tracking. Laying there, I activated the link, the familiar pressure behind my ears coming into existence.

_'Hey, Selriona. You awake?'_

_'One moment!' _she shouted over the telepathic link. I cocked an eyebrow, but waited. After a minute, she began speaking to me. _'Alright, sorry about that. I just found a cultist camp.'_

_'Ah, I see. What were they doing?'_

_'Sacrificing one Red drake, a Blue whelp, and a few sheep to the Old Gods.'_

_'How did they even - nevermind! Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that everything in Stormwind is good. There was a bit of arcane corruption via a flask, and I destroyed it. A highborne warlock had some void corruption, and I brought it to her attention and burned off, I'd say half of it. She wasn't very corrupt, so she'll have enough common sense to have the rest of the corruption purged. Of course, I'll still keep an eye on her.'_

_'A corrupted flask? Any sign of who put it there?'_

I resisted the urge to shake my head. _'Not a thing. And there wasn't any other arcane corruption in Stormwind, so I assume whoever put it there is gone now.'_

_'Hmm, good to know. I'll portal back to Grim Batol and put it in The Records.' _The Records were basically the collected information of the past century of the Twilight Flight carrying out their charge, packed into multiple tomes back in Grim Batol that the dragons sometimes used to look for patterns and predict where something might happen. Anticipating rather than just reacting.

_'Alright. Is there anything else I should be aware of?'_

_'Well, the cultist camp I just destroyed was all the way over in the Ghostlands, so not them. However, I _did_ hear that the Burning Legion tried to kill some priests and paladins in Silvermoon City.'_

I raised an eyebrow. _'They did? Wait, specify 'tried'.'_

_'One of our drakes there stopped them. They say it didn't seem like the demons were really trying.'_

_'Huh. How long ago was this?'_

_'I learned about it just now, and it happened two days ago.'_

_'You think this might have anything to do with the magic amplifier?' _I asked.

_'I don't know. It's a little strange that the Legion would try to go right _into_ Silvermoon to do something like this, but it's no cause for alarm... yet.'_

_'Hmm, key word yet.'_

_'So, how's Stormwind?' _she asked.

_'It's great. It feels so good to be back home, you know?'_

_'Yeah, guessing its kinda like how I feel going back to Grim Batol.'_

_'Probably. So many things have changed, here, though. I mean, we didn't even know there were Pandaren until a few years ago when they arrived. Not to mention how few people there are here. Stormwind used to be packed, but now...'_

_'It's the war with the Horde, it wears down both sides.'_

_'I know, but its weird, you know? Whatever's going to happen with the Alliance and the Horde, they'll probably finish their battles soon. Either with truce, or by one standing on the smoldering ruins of the other.'_

_'Hmm, that's the spirit,'_ she grunted through the link.

_'So, what's it like up in the Ghostlands?' _I asked, changing the subject.

_'I swear, this place is so dreary! I'm almost sleeping as much as you.'_

_'I don't know if I should be offended by that.'_

_'It's dark, and it's miserable. I can't wait until Dementliona switches posts with me.'_

I sighed into the link. _'How did Dementliona get such a good post anyhow? I mean, really? Mulgore? The region in Azeroth with by far and large the best weather, scenery, everything?'_

_'Right place, right time,' _came her curt, and injured, response. _'So, anything else you wanted to tell me?'_

_'Well no. But now that you mention it, I've been meaning to ask. How're__ relations with the other Flights?'_

_'They... could be worse,' _was all she said.

Those four words spoke volumes. _'It's been over a hundred years. You'd think they'd learn to trust us by now.'_

_'Amanthe, it's only been a hundred years.'_

_'Only been - oh, right. Dragons, see time different. Got it.'_

_'At least the Bronze trust us. They see the future, so they know we won't turn on them. At least, I don't think we will. Can't imagine why we would, after things have gotten so much better.'_

We continued to just talk for a good half an hour, discussing various events in each other's daily lives. As time passed I found it harder and harder to keep myself awake, until I rolled over and blew out the candle giving my room light, bade Selriona good night, and went to sleep.

* * *

><p>The very next day, I was again training at the Cathedral of the Light. The very moment I entered the main hall, Jason stopped me.<p>

"Amanthe, I've been looking for you."

I raised an eyebrow. "Oh?"

"Yeah. Remember how I told you that Mrs. Manner would be bringer her students here to practice for their pageant? Well, they need some people to help them out. I figured, since you know one of the kids, you'd be perfect for the job."

I shifted my weight on my feet. "Where are they?" I asked.

"You know the main library? The chamber on the other side from it."

I nodded. "Thank you, Jason." After curtsying to him, I departed. I wasted no time in finding the corridor leading towards the library, which took my around ten minutes.

The main library was the largest collection of information in the entirety of Stormwind. Its shelves formed a labyrinth, filled with tomes in every language from Orcish to Gnomish to even some Draconic books. The tomes collected dust when they weren't being read, and many of them indeed never were. The white marble room appeared to be filled with cracks, but in fact that was the black-and-white coloration of the marble itself. That's not to say there weren't a few cobweb strands in the upper corners where it was hard to reach them, and weren't cleaned quite as often as the rest of the library.

My destination was, as Jason had said, on the exact opposite of the hallway that branched off into the library. That room in particular was the portion of the Cathedral where outside groups went whenever they needed an extended stay in the Cathedral, such as Mrs. Manner and her students. The doors I opened to enter were impressive. Large, wooden, double doors with heavy iron knockers on the outside. They smelled old, and I knew they were the same exact doors they had been since I first stepped foot in this place nearly a hundred and fifty years ago. I knew that by virtue of the vaguely heart-shaped burn above the right knocker. It was a long room, with a stained glass portrait on the back wall of the sun shining down on rolling green fields with wispy white clouds dotting the sky. The room's near and far walls were pentagons, rectangles with triangles placed on top of them like a young child's drawing of a house.

The sides were cut off by rows of pillars stretching to the roof, separating the area into three different parts; the central area, and two sides. The floor of the side areas were a sky blue, which gradually faded to white as you moved towards the center. The pillars weren't smooth cylinders either, but had many dozens of vertical lines stretching up them. A dozen pillars on each side, however, the second on the left had a fist-sized chunk missing from its side, revealing the cold marble beneath in its most natural, un-cut form. Lanterns hung from the walls, providing light.

The room itself was, by itself, bare. No shelves to hold holy relics. No ancient tomes of historical events that I'd been alive to witness. There were, however, quite a few people standing in this room, most of them children. Around a dozen six year old kids were talking excitedly with each other, clustered around the far end of the room's middle. Their chatter raised a slight din in the room, echoing off the walls. I spotted Anna, the little girl talking animatedly with another boy with blonde hair and a beatific smile. She didn't notice me as I stepped in the room, closing the massive doors behind me as quietly as I could.

Mrs. Manner stuck out from the children like a sore thumb. She wore a black suit, typical of teachers these days, creased at several points with a light tear at the right shoulder. Her school jeans were a rich blue, like the ocean on a clear day. Her olive skin was dotted in more than one places with black marks, clearly pen marks. She was currently bending down to help settle a dispute between a young girl and a boy, leaving her back to me.

"Christina, I know you want to be Arthas, but Arthas was a boy. You can be Jaina if you want." The red-haired girl pouted, while the black haired boy stuck out his tongue at her. "Alex, be nice." He frowned, but grumbled out a 'Yes Mrs. Manner' and went back to a group of three handling all sorts of colored paper and wooden swords.

"Mrs. Manner?" I asked, making her whirl around with a start. One or two black pen marks were around her eyebrows, which themselves were above her two different colored eyes; her left eye was green, her right eye was brown with a silvery ring in the middle of the iris. "Hello, I'm with the Cathedral, I'm a priestess here. I was wondering if you needed any help with anything?"

She gasped, bringing a hand up to her mouth. She shook her head forcefully, sending her dark brown hair flying. "Oh, no no no, I can't ask you to do that!"

"Actually, my mentor told me to come here, see if I could help." I turned to look at Anna, still unaware of my presence. "And I actually know one of your girls here."

"Oh you do?" she asked excitedly. "Small world, isn't it?" She tapped her foot on the ground and placed a bent finger to her lips. "Well, now that I think about it, I _could_ use some help organizing the kids into roles."

"I saw," I said while nodding. "Christina wanted to be Arthas," I said, smiling.

"Ah, so you know Christina?"

I shook my head. "Actually, no, I overheard you talking to her. I actually know - "

"Manthy!" I turned around to scoop Anna up in a hug. "Hi!"

I set her down, smiling. "Hi, Anna! How's school?"

"Um, good! Guess who I get to be!" she said, her voice brimming with joy. My family.

I tilted my head. "Hmm... I give up. Who?"

She jumped up and down, smiling. "I get to be Sylvanas!"

"That's great" I said with genuine enthusiasm. Still, it made me a bit sad. This constant war with the Horde, stopping only every now and then when both sides depleted their military numbers, forced people to grow up too fast. Even those who hadn't lost anyone, like Anna, knew much more about death than someone of their age should. Why else would _six year olds_ be putting on a play about Arthas Menethil's... episode?

Mrs. Manner smiled at me. "You know Anna, then?" she asked.

I nodded. "Yes, I babysit her while her parents work at the Dwarven District on Fridays. The rest of the time, you know, Sunday through Thursday, she come to school, so..." I trailed off.

"Oh, so. As I was saying, I could use help organizing the children into their respective roles. Um, Connor and Griffin are arguing on who gets to be Muradin. Think you could go help them out?" she asked politely, her eyes flickering over to one of the pillars.

I looked over to where her eyes had gone and saw two figures standing behind it, standing directly in front of a lantern so that the light emanating from it made it impossible to distinguish their features. "Yeah, of course. I'll go help them right now."

The school teacher clapped her hands together. "Oh, thank you so much, um..."

"Amanthe," I answered.

She threw her head back, mouth wide open. "Aaah, so _that's_ why Anna called you Manthy."

Without further conversation, I walked over to the two boys talking - and probably arguing, if what Mrs. Manner said was true - behind the pillar. One of them was red-haired with blue eyes, the other black haired with green eyes.

"No! I wanna be Muradin!"

"No! Me!" the one with black hair protested.

"No! Mrs. Manner said _I _get to be Muradin!"

"No she didn't! Liar!"

"Yuh-huh!"

"Uh-uh!"

They pressed their noses together. "Yuh-huh!"

"Uh-uh!"

"Alright boys," I said, making them snap their heads around to me. "Calm down. Let's work this out."

"Who are you?" asked the red-haired boy.

I crossed my arms, then uncrossed them and knelt to their level. "I'm Amanthe, I'm a priestess here at the Cathedral. Your teacher told me to help you two decide who's going to be Muradin."

Both shouted at once, "I'm gonna be Muradin! No, me! Stop copying me!" They glared at each other and growled again, acting more like animals than young boys - nevermind.

"Boys, boys. Settle down. Now, Muradin Bronzebeard had, well, a _bronze beard. _I pointed to the boy with red hair and guessed. "Griffin's hair is more of that color." They didn't correct me, so I assumed I got it right. "Sorry, Connor. But Griffin's the better Muradin."

Both of them made noises at once.

"Aww!"

"Yeah!"

I smiled as they went to go help Mrs. Manner with coming up with props to use. I smiled. I'd forgotten how good it feels, just being a priestess. Not the first Twilight Dragonsworn, or the oldest member of said Flight.

Wonder how long that'll last.

* * *

><p><strong>ARGBLGARGL! I FUCKING HATE SCHOOL!<strong>

**This chapter should have been done earlier, but each time I come home from school I flop on my bed and I'm just like 'fuck writing'. And it's only gonna get worse when I make my way to college. *whimpers***

**Review, let me know what you think.**


	22. Chapter 22:Deep Shit

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Massive thanks to my beta, dharak.**

**Chapter published 9/22/12**

* * *

><p><span>Amanthe<span>

The next four days passed in relative monotony. The high elf who had been corrupted, as I expected, sought help for the remaining void corruption that was more firmly rooted in her soul. Three days later, she was clean. I continued my training on Saturdays through Wednesdays, and babysat Anna on the only day her parents both had work AND she had no school, Friday. I kept my head down to avoid drawing the ire of Stormwind's government, which on the day after I helped Mrs. Manner in the Cathedral, created a law that all but created an official curfew. It meant the difference between the guards simply asking why you were out late at night and them simply taking you away for questioning.

Nothing of note in my life really happened until Thursday, my one day off from training and babysitting (Not that babysitting my great-great-great-grandniece was a _chore_). I was sitting at my table, reading my fantasy novel, having just finished lunch. Then I was treated to a visitor nearly destroying my door in the process of opening it._  
><em>

Mig'jan ran in, in the rags he used to move about Stormwind's less savory characters, and slammed the door behind me. He was a mess. Sweat beaded down his bright red face, his chest heaved as he took in deep breaths. His forest green eyes were wide, and his skin prickled with goosebumps.

I raised an eyebrow as he exploded into words. "Amanthe! Mon, we have got a _big_ situation! I was snoopin' around the Canals, and I managed ta find out that these people were planning ta - oh by me father's tusks, their going ta invade the holy folk, and, and I don't know!" He took another deep breath.

I got out of my chair and placed a hand on his shoulder. "Relax, relax. Slow down, and tell me the story from the start. Want something to drink?"

He nodded, still short of breath. "Yeah... some water, please, mon." He moved over to one of the chairs around my table and collapsed into it. I fished around in my cabinets for a glass and went over to the faucet. Once the glass was full I gave it to Mig'jan, who downed it in two seconds flat. Impressive.

"Alright, now start from the beginning. Slower this time."

He nodded, still gulping down air. "Alright, alright. I was just walking along, minding my own business, when I heard some people speaking through a door. I couldn't make it out none. So I _may_ have used some of mah magic in addition ta my natural good hearing ta let me hear dem. I heard dem talkin' about doing somethin' in ta holy folk's place right now! They've probably already done somethin', mon!" he said, hyperventilating.

"Calm down, Mig'jan. Calm down, alright? We'll handle it." I stuck out my hand which he gripped with his own sweaty one, using me to pull himself up. I frowned when he let go of my hand, wiping it on the table. I held up my hands and concentrated, dark blue energy flowing along them. I opened the twilight portal and gestured towards it. "Go on in, I'll follow you."

The shaman nodded and walked inside, vanishing. I followed suit, waited the three seconds while the world was blacked out, and caught myself on my feet as the portal tossed me into the twilight realm. Mig'jan was still on his knees, stumbling back up. He brushed himself off, sending waves of shadow and mist away from him. He stuck a hand into a pocket, and his rags once again merged into a warm brown leather outfit, the colors subtly deadened by the violet haze of the twilight realm.

"Come on," I said, my voice echoing more than it would in the physical realm. "Lead me to where you found these people."

"Right, right," he said, hands fidgeting. "Follow me, this way," he said, walking out of my home. I closed the door behind us and followed Mig'jan to where he had supposedly overheard people talking about attacking the Cathedral or something. He led me through the darkened streets of Stormwind, heavy fog curling around the surface of the water filling the Canals, splashing every now and then as a passerby tossed in a pebble, or a fish below swam close to the surface.

Eventually he turned into a dark alley, leading me down into it. The stones here were cracked, no doubt filled with moss in the physical realm. The dark shadows here pulsed gently in the twilight realm, a slight pressure rippling around my head, not unlike the force of ocean waves. There were no doors here, save for one at the very end. Mig'jan lead me right up to it, and then shivered.

"Brrrr, it's cold in this realm, mon. How can ya stand it?"

I raised an eyebrow at him. "I don't know what you're talking about. It's not that cold."

"Humph! At any rate, here's ta buildin' I found dem in." He walked up to the door and shied away just before opening it. "Um, ladies first." I glared at him. "Oh, all right! Fine!" He stepped back and kicked the door open. The wooden frame collapsed inward, sending dark ripples away from it, bouncing off the floor, the walls, _us. _I walked up, peered inside, and bit down a curse.

"Well, mon? What do ya see?" he asked. Of course, Pallasion hadn't given his Dragonsworn the ability to see corruption in the twilight realm. Of course, having never been around him long enough to ask, I didn't know the reason.

"There's a lot of red mist here." Indeed there was. The inside of the building wasn't large, a small stone _box_ that couldn't hold more than five at a time, but there _was_ a ladder leading to a second floor, and the red haze grew brighter the further up the ladder I looked. I stepped inside. "One moment." I climbed up the ladder, which gently shook under my weight. I frowned, and slowed down. Before too long I reached the second floor and got off the ladder.

"Well, mon?" came Mig'jan's voice from below. "What do ya' see?"

The second floor was considerably more spacious than the first floor. A wooden floor, no windows, and stone walls. It looked big enough to comfortably hold a dozen people, but there was no furniture. That was strange, because furniture showed up in the twilight realm. The red fog of demonic corruption was at its thickest here, focused around a central glob the size of my fist.

"There's a lot of demonic corruption up here, and something small that seems to have the most. Probably some kind of artifact, or device. I'm going into the physical realm to check it out, one moment," I said, dark blue energy covering my skin. With a grunt of effort I pulled myself out of the twilight realm, and looked about the room.

I frowned. Save for the absence of purple mist and ruby fog, the room was completely the same. The point of greatest demonic corruption was conspicuously empty. That, combined with the lack of any trail leading _out_ of the room, lead me to only one conclusion; whoever had been here teleported away.

"Son of a bitch," I whispered under my breath, sinking back into the twilight realm, only to find myself staring at Mig'jan's back. I jumped back, sending waves of mist away from my feet, making him also jump and turn around to face me. "Bad news. Whatever was here, it's long gone. Teleported away, I bet."

All the blood drained out of his face. "Oh no, no-no-no-no-no. This is _bad_, 'Manthe! What are we gonna do, what are we gonna do?!"

"First, calm down! Okay, lets go to the Cathedral. If they've already done anything, we need to find out what it is pronto. Meet me at the gates," I said, vanishing down the ladders.

While walking towards the Cathedral, I debated contacted Selriona. For the first part of the trip I was in favor of telling her, but then I told myself to wait and see if there was anything we couldn't get rid of by ourselves.

The Cathedral within the twilight realm was _dark._ The Light was the exact opposite of corruption, making it hard to see anything in the vicinity of the Cathedral. The violet mist darkened to nearly black as it neared the consecrated earth, and this would make navigating its halls utter horror. On the plus side, any corruption would be impossible to miss.

A few minutes later, Mig'jan appeared by my side as I stood between the fountain and the stairs to the Cathedral. "Let's go in," I said, and with that we started up. I took the front, Mig'jan nervously staying behind me. As we climbed the steps and the air darkened, I asked him something. "Mig'jan, have you ever caught anything before? Corruption, I mean."

I caught the disguised troll shaking his head out of the corner of my eye. We stepped into the Cathedral. "Nah, never! Nothin' like this, anyway. Aww man, we are in deep! Oh man!"

"Well, anyway, we're here. Divide and conquer, meet back up with me at the fountain."

"I can't see corruption like ya can!" And then, under his breath, "I'm gonna tan that dragon's hide for forgettin' that."

I frowned. "Riiight, that. So, um... alright, here's the plan. _I_ will go in and search for something, _you_ stay here and, um... guard the Cathedral. From, um... all that... fog. See ya!" I said, diving straight into the Cathedral's labyrinthine corridors.

It took me all of ten seconds to walk straight into a wall. I was still within Mig'jan's gaze, and I was treated to his condescending snicker. I rubbed my nose and swore, my eyes slowly adjusting to the dim lighting within the consecrated grounds of the Cathedral. The next minutes passed by in agonizing monotony. Glance in this room, empty. Glance in this room empty, look in the room connected to it, empty. The Cathedral of Light was so dark from within the twilight realm that I could barely see my hand in front of my face, the glow from the torches that lined the wall being swallowed up by the gloom.

I cursed after bumping into a table and swiped my arm, sending a candle crashing to ground, not caring how it would look in the physical realm. Before the fires could spread along any flammable materials I stamped it out. After exhausting every last room that the source of demonic corruption could be in, I walked outside of the Cathedral towards the fountain, rapidly exiting the gloom. Mig'jan had passed out on a bench near the fountain.

I sighed and nudged him in the ribs with my foot. He was up with a snort, sputtering. "Ungh! Um, yeah? Find anythin'?"

I shook my head. "Not a damn thing. Not surprising, really. I mean, it _is_ consecrated ground. Damn it, damn it, damn it, we can't just comb all of Stormwind!"

A hand appeared on my right shoulder. "Alright, lets do this. Ya go talk ta Selriona, and I go tell da guard about this occurrence. With how jumpy they are, I don't think it'll take much ta get them ta investigate this matter. And if I get in trouble, hey! Ya can always pull me into ta twilight realm." The hand removed itself from me.

I smiled. "Alright, sounds like a plan. I'm going back home. If the guard starts to become hostile to you, run there and I'll protect you. See you around," I said, turning away from the fountain.

"Wait!" he said. I turned around. "Can ya get me out of ta twilight realm?"

"Oh, right. Hold on." I took a deep breath and placed a hand on his shoulder. "Better hope nobody asks any questions," I said with a malicious smile, twilight energy flowing along my fingertips and across his body. I grunted in effort and with a loud _pop_, he was gone, displaced into the physical realm.

_'Selriona, we _may_ have a little bit of a problem.'_

Her voice was worried. _'What kind of problem?'_

_'A Burning Legion problem. Mig'jan says he overheard some people talking about doing something with the Cathedral of Light, some sort of attack. And when I looked in the building he mentioned, there was a _lot_ of demonic corruption, centered around a small point that's about the size of my fist.'_

_'Oh, oh dear, that is not good.'_

_'Think this has anything to do with the magic amplifier? It's been eighty years but, I mean, the spot of corruption's the right size. If the Legion corrupted it, then...'_

_'We're fucked,' _she said simply. _'Is there anything in the Cathedral?'_

I shook my head, then remembered how it would look to others, _then_ remembered I was still in the twilight realm. _'No, not a thing. Mig'jan decided he'll go tell the guard, and I'll tell you.'_

_'This is really not good. It's not like the Legion to do something like _this._ Sending their minions to attack consecrated land? That's a stupid strategy if I ever heard one. There's gotta be something more.'_

_'And whatever it is,' _I continued off of her sentence. _'I bet it has something to do with whatever that corruption spot is. It may be the magic amplifier, it may not. Problem is, what am I going to do?'_

_'Were there any papers at the point where you found the corruption? Schedules, anything?'_

_'Not a thing. And there's no trail leading out of the building either, so they either teleported or portaled out. I've got no lead, nothing.'_

_'Ah, Titans damn it! Okay okay, tell the Cathedral of Light what you found out. Put them on the alert. I'm on my way, just give me a few days to wrap things up here.'_

_'Got it, see you when?'_

_'Sunday, probably,' _she said. I nodded. I could live with Sunday.

_'Right, see you then.' _The link faded into nothing, just as I arrived back home. I pulled myself out of the twilight realm and sunk into a chair around the dinner table. I hadn't quite gotten that down yet; moving directly across the planes of existence was _exhausting. _I took a few minutes to rest, after which I needed to go inform the Cathedral of the Light. This had to be another part of whatever master plan the Legion had hatched. Why else would they plan something as stupid as invading consecrated ground?

The Legion could not be allowed another victory.

* * *

><p>"The Scourge could not be allowed another victory," Mrs. Manner said to her students, crowded around her in a semicircle, looking up from where they sat with round eyes, eager to hear what the heroes of old had done in their times. In <em>my<em> time. "So do you know what Arthas did?" Everyone shook their head, and I spared a glance around the Cathedral room.

It was the same room they had been in before, but now, of course, there were many changes to it. A few background props were in a scattered heap over to one of the walls, a hopelessly tangled mess of cardboard fire, painted white bricks, the outline of an army of risen corpses. Their colors bled into each other, the lines were squiggly, and the undead were so big-eyed they seemed to be _cute. _I looked closely at the yellow teeth of a ghoul, the black outline tainting its color. Well, almost cute. A few of the children were dressed up as their roles, their parents having made the costumes over the previous week and the kids, eager as they were, wore them with pride. Anna was _not_ wearing a Sylvannas costume yet.

Two of Stormwind's guards stood by the gateway, swords and shields resting by their sides, but nonetheless easy to reach. I could see through the slits of their helmets their ever-watchful gaze, waiting to see if the anonymous tip they'd gotten about the Cathedral being in danger was valid or not. Two other guards watched the outside of the corridor, facing the main library, but they were rendered invisible by the massive door to our room.

"He looked at Stratholme and said that they needed to go in and purge the sick people before they could become undead." The group of children around her began to protest, complaining. The school teacher held up her hand, and they quieted down as one. "Now now, remember to see it the way Arthas did. There wasn't a cure for the plague of undeath, so he saw those sick people as already being dead, and it was just a matter of time before they became undead. Now, that doesn't excuse what he did, but strategically speaking, it _was_ the best idea."

I myself leaned against one of the pillars, watching Mrs. Manner teach her class about the history of Arthas's fall, a thick wad of paper in her lap; the scripts. Anna turned around and caught my eye, waving and smiling. I smiled back, then pointed to Mrs. Manner. The albino girl pouted, then turned back around to the woman before she could be scolded for not paying attention.

I wondered what was up with the Legion. Whatever that device was, how could they possibly get it into the Cathedral, assuming that's what they wanted? They had to know the land was consecrated, right? But... how much would that help? Only the floors were consecrated, since it was done to make sure the situation with Archbishop Benedictus nearly a hundred and fifty years ago didn't repeat. The consecration was made for _long term_ residents. Only the floor. If someone were to climb the walls to get somewhere... shit. But then, they'd be conspicuous, wouldn't they?

I shifted on my feet and looked around at Jason and two paladins in the room, also waiting patiently while Mrs. Manner explained Arthas's history to her class. I, of course, warned the Cathedral myself, so now a lot of us stuck to the role of safety in numbers. Maybe not as much as we should, but come on. We were on consecrated ground. What's the worst that could happen? At least, that was the thought process of the higher-ups.

After a few more minutes she divided the class up into a few groups to go practice their lines. She would help her kids with Arthas's journey towards Strathlome, I took the Culling itself, Jason had the journey to Frostmourne, and so on.

"Alright," I said to the one kid with me. "You're playing Mal'ganis, right?" I asked. Aaron nodded excitedly. Alex, the designated Arthas, was with Mrs. Manner, since he had _by far_ the most lines in the play. "Nice, can I see your script?" With a smile he handed the sheet of thick stapled packet over to me. I flipped over several pages before reaching the part with the Culling of Strathholme, then handed it back to him.

A few minutes later, he recited one of the lines. "As you can see," he practiced, smiling. "Your people are mine now." He paused and scanned his eyes over the paper in his grasp. "I will now turn this city household by household...until the flame of life has been snuffed out... forever." He frowned when he finished. "Mal'ganis is a big meanie."

I suppressed a shiver. Don't I know. Over the following few minutes I helped Aaron get his lines for Mal'ganis in Stratholme down, since he also had to keep in mind _when_ to say his lines, what voice to say them in, all that. Not that it would really make much difference. He's _six._

"Your journey has just begun, young prince." A chill ran down my spine. The sort of bad-news chill that I'd grown to trust.

Instincts are very peculiar things. They can be simple, like simply the ability to breathe without thinking about it, or blinking when something is thrown at your eyes. Dragons and mortals have equally strong instincts, _however_ over the ages we'd come to ignore our instincts, thinking them not able to connect with our complex lives. How wrong we are. Instincts run very deep. The Titans created us to be self-sustaining, and even with the so-called 'curse' of flesh the internal defenses remained as our instincts, warning us when something is about to go wrong. They could inform us about a _lot_ of things, and were very rarely mistaken. I'd recently taken to trying to pay more attention to my instinctive feelings of when something is happening, rather than just brushing it off as being paranoid. So when the hairs on my neck stood straight up, I knew that something was about to go horribly wrong.

Aaraon frowned. "Amanthe, what's wrong? You look sad." At that moment the doors flew open and a hooded figure ran in, hovering off the ground and running on the air as if it were solid. The robes they wore were a dark red, like dry blood, webbed over with streaks of pure black. In their hand was a tiny, plum-sized black crystal.

The guards tried to stop him. "Halt!" Without a word, the figure threw their hands to the side, and both the guards collapsed screaming in agony, tiny shadows buzzing around them and tearing their flesh. They reared back, letting me see under the hood a human man, and smashed the crystal onto the ground. It shattered into a million pieces, dark green smoke rising up from it and forming a spinning, fel-green portal.

I grabbed Aaron and pushed him back. I heard one of the paladins yell, "Protect the children!" A massive blast of holy fire erupted from the ceiling and struck the invader down, but it was too late. Out of the portal spilled half a dozen fel-hounds, their paws smoking on the tiles, charging at us. Mrs. Manner gathered up the children to the far end of the room, since the portal blocked the exit. Two of the demons came at me, and I wasted no time shielding myself and sinking into my shadowform.

The first one pounced at me and I blasted its mind, instantly killing it and making it dissolve into mist. The second one barreled at me, the two antennae-like protrusions from its head flaring blue. My shield vanished and it knocked me over to the ground, trying to bite my chest. I growled at it and grabbed its mouth, lighting up my hands with twilight fire and launching a fireball point blank. It fell off, and faded to mist as well. I emerged from my shadowform. It wouldn't help against demons. I needed the Light.

I looked towards one of the paladins and wove a renew onto her, and then turned around to see a second felhound attacking me, twice the size of the other two. Like those, its paws smoldered from the consecrated earth. I threw myself to the side, letting it jump by me. I called down the Light to smite it, making the demon growl in pain and light up those two prongs with blue. I felt my mana pool drain, and I saw the burns on its back heal. I growled, and called holy fire down on it. When it tried to keep draining my mana, I had an idea. All that mana had to go somewhere, right? I wove another spell, and burned the mana it had stolen from me. The felhound howled in agony, bright blue smoke pouring from its mouth, and dropped to the ground, twitching lightly. Another mind blast made it burst into nothingness.

I turned around to the portal, and stumbled back in fear. There, pushing its way into Azeroth, was a red-skinned eredar, so tall as to be nearly unable to fit in the room. It gave out a roar of pain as the ground burned it, but its hands lit up green with magic anyway. Jason screamed, a shell of fel energy cocooning him and levitating him into the portal. He was frozen where he was, face twisted into an expression of pain. He went through, and was gone. Horror rose in me as I fought with the two paladins against the eredar, but with more felhounds coming out to drain our magic, it was clearly a hopeless battle. The eredar kicked away one of the paladins, making her sail into a pillar. She then fell to the ground in a crumpled heap. I was healing her in moments, but in that time the eredar imprisoned the other paladin and, like Jason, pushed him through the portal. A felhound ran out of the portal, past me... towards the kids.

_Anna!_ I shouted in my mind, already calling down another pillar of holy fire. But it wasn't needed. The felhound pounced at the children, huddled in a tight cluster, and they screamed. Anna raised her arm to block her head, and a wave of Light came out of her, golden and pure, burning the felhound to cinders in a moment before she returned to cowering. Turning back to the eredar, I saw it raising an eyebrow in curiosity, the other paladin floating into the portal. No more felhounds came, so I unloaded at it, blasting it with plagues, twilight fireballs and mind blasts. It growled in pain but ignored me, raising a glowing hand towards the children. Two twisting beams of fel magic erupted out and extended towards Anna, wrapping her in the same green cocoon, paralyzing her mid-scream. I froze, watching in horror as the eredar moved Anna inside the portal, and she was gone.

Shadows consumed me again, and I screamed. My vision turned red and fire surged through my veins. I raised my arms and thrust them down, a massive pillar of holy fire engulfing the demon. Once done, I instantly blasted it with a twilight pyroblast, not giving it time to recover. Through the smoke I saw it stagger back. I summoned my magic again, creating an enormous explosion of twilight flame right on the red-skinned demon's chest, the blaze scorching me and devastating the demon. It roared in pain and I _felt_ rather then saw it cast a curse on me, agony filling my veins.

I ignored the pain and dispersed into shadows, flying at it. I reformed right next to the demon and grabbed its legs, twilight power surging around me. I pulled the both of us into the twilight realm and smote it with the Light, and then blasted its mind. It threw me away, but I levitated down without harm and charged at it like a maniac. Once close I could _feel_ the shadows of the twilight realm condensing around me, the writhing mist and red fog of corruption obeying my fury. With a primal scream of rage thick coils of dark blue lightning exploded outwards from me in all directions, most of it harmlessly arcing along the floor and walls, but _more_ than enough incinerating the eredar. It staggered back once, curled over, and exploded into burning embers. I pulled myself out of the twilight realm, leaving shadowform, my anger spent.

The moment I materialized in the physical realm again, I felt strong arms hold me down. I looked up into the face of a wrathguard, blue and sneering. I tried to call my magic up again, but before I had a chance fel fire ran down its arms and wrapped around me, turning into a bright green cocoon. I froze, unable to move and scream from the pain of the spell, paralyzed in place. The demon let go of me and the shell, with me inside it, rose into the air. I couldn't move my eyes, so I helplessly looked at the arched ceiling of the Cathedral as I moved. The portal dominated my vision, growing impossibly close, closer, _closer._

For a long time, everything turned green, and a strange force propelled me against a massive tide of energy pushing me away from... somewhere. The green light abruptly faded, signaling that I reached the other end of the portal.

The green shell of paralyzing magic dissipated, and I fell onto a stone floor. I looked around, and all the blood drained out of my face.

It was dark, so very dark, heavy black clouds obscuring the sky completely. The occasional flash of lightning rumbled through, illuminating the dark scene. The landscape was little better. The stone was as dark as the clouds, utterly devoid of all life. It coiled through the world in heavy hills and dips, and off in the distance a series of enormous volcanoes stood tall, their tips alight with sickly emerald lava, spewing ash into the air to fuel the black clouds. The land was covered with the Burning Legion's machines; the skeletons of Fel Reavers stood against the dark background, sparks of electricity exploding around their joints. Infernal meteors sailed through the skies above me like rain, some bright red meteors among the green ones. Thousands upon thousands of demons patrolled the grounds in vast formations, honing their skills of planetary genocide. I whirled around, looking around. I was on a black plateau, elevated slightly above the scene. Around me were several other priests and paladins that trained in the Cathedral, among them...

"_Anna,_" I hissed, rushing over to the shaking girl. I knelt to her level and wrapped my arms around her. Without word she clamped her arms behind my neck, hugging me as hard as she could. She sobbed violently, utterly out of her mind. I was afraid too. We'd been abducted by the Legion. We were probably going to be killed, or, or put to work slaving away for them, or just tortured, thrown to their succubi and dreadlords for the rest our lives..._  
><em>

My voice cracked, and tears began to trickle down my cheek. Anna kept sobbing, and I wove a Mind Soothe onto her thoughts, gently lulling her to sleep in my arms.

Wing-beats filled the air, and I looked up from her as a dreadlord touched down on our elevated platform. He sent a wave of shadow magic washing over us, and what was left of my mana evaporated into thin air. Several whimpers filled the air as all eyes turned to the dreadlord. It looked over us with unfathomable contempt, and then spoke, his voice suave with a razor-like echo.

"You will follow me." He didn't have to add 'or die'. One of the paladins charged, hammer held high, but the dreadlord simply held out a hand. A massive burst of green energy exploded out, minuscule flies buzzing into and out of existence. The wave knocked the plated warrior back, and pushed the rest of us off our feet. The dreadlord chuckled darkly. "Fools. Do you not understand your position? You are on Argus." I gasped along with several others, my worst fears confirmed. "Our bastion, our base of operations. It is impossible to escape here. You are hopelessly outnumbered, watched every moment you are here. If you wish to extend your insignificant lives by even a slight amount, you will do as we say when we say without any protest. Now, follow me." He turned around and began walking off, not waiting for us to catch up. As a group we followed, me carrying Anna in my arms. After all, if we stayed alive longer, the more chance we had of escape, right? But how? What could I do?

An idea came to mind. The link! Of course, I could contact Selriona! She could come up with something, surely. _'Selriona! I am in so much trouble. The Cathedral got invaded and the Legion kidnapped some of us to Argus! Please, you have to do something! Anything, just get me outta here!'_

I waited a few moments for a response, the dreadlord leading us past a field of _hundreds_ of fel-cannons. _'Selriona, come on, answer me! Please, please you've got to hear me! Please!' _Despair solidified in my heart. What if she couldn't hear me? We had enough trouble communicating on Outland, how bad would it be on _Argus? _We walked past the lines and lines of fel-cannons, and a titanic building came into sight. It was, of all things, a wooden mansion as large as the Cathedral of Light. There were no windows, and no doors. Just a gateway with some strange Legion device over it. The dreadlord calmly herded us there. A paladin, the same one that tried to attack, made a run for it, but a passing shivarra simply tossed him back with her six arms. After that, his will seemed broken, and he trudged without complaint after the winged demon.

_'Damn it, dragon! _Please, _you can't leave me alone here! Not now, please, I'm begging you, not now! Answer me, please, I'm begging you!' _We all entered the wooden building, tears streaming down my face, my hope gone.

_'Please, Selriona. My friend. I, I don't... I don't want to die.' _I whimpered into both the link and in reality. _'I don't wanna die.'_

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><p><span>Selriona<span>_  
><em>

_"TITANS DAMN THEM TO THE DARKEST REACHES OF THE TWISTING NETHER!" _I howled, breathing another heavy stream of twilight fire into the open air. The shadows of the twilight realm pulsed and writhed angrily around me, responding to my emotions. _"AND MAY THE GODS DAMN THEM TO THE DEEPEST PIT OF THE FOULEST HELL!" _Another stream of twilight fire lit up the twilight sky above the Ghostlands.

_'Amanthe, can you hear me? If you can, just tell me, because I can hear you!' _I shouted desperately into the link.

Instead of confirmation, her terrified voice rang in my mind. _'Please, Selriona. My friend. I, I don't... I don't want to die.' _She whimpered. _'I don't wanna die.'_

_'Damn it, why can't you hear me? Amanthe, if you hear this, I'm coming to get you! Just hold on! Just stay alive, I'm on my way!'_ I shut the link off after a minute of waiting for a response that never came.

Damn it, damn it, _damn it! _The Burning Legion's attack on Silvermoon's priests and paladins wasn't intended to kill them, I knew that for sure now. It was an abduction attempt. And when they failed there, they moved their servants into Stormwind, and succeeded. But what would I do about it? The ones abducted were surely undergoing a level of agony I couldn't begin to imagine. Leaving her to rot was _not_ an option. But what could I do? This was _Argus._ The Burning Legion's stronghold. Going in to rescue Amanthe would be a suicide mission.

_She'd do it for me, damn it!_

I smacked my tail's spiked club on the ground and took to the air, heading full-speed towards Silvermoon City. But _how?_ How could I save her? Leaving aside just getting there in the first place, how would I save her? It was obvious she couldn't hear my end of the link, so telling her where I was coming to help her was impossible. In theory, I'd be safe within the twilight realm, but that's assuming there is no magic there that transcends planes of reality. Ha ha, riiight. Demonic security on Argus would be _beyond_ high. I couldn't bring many people to help me; this needed to be a small, stealthy force bent on infiltration. I couldn't bring anyone with too much power either, lest their energy draw the Legion's attention. I frowned. So much for bullying Verthelion into helping me. But who else would want to help Amanthe? Who else had good relations with her? Who else would follow me into the most dangerous place in all of existence to help her?

Several ideas bloomed in my skull. Alright, good. Good.

In no time I reached Silvermoon City and, still within the twilight realm, flew within its walls. Once inside I shifted to the form of a blood elf female, found an alley, and entered the physical realm. I brushed my civilian's clothes, and began to hunt my quarry. I wound my way through the streets of the blood elven capital city, passing towering arcane guardians, blood elves, orcs, trolls, and even a few goblins. Street vendors sold fruit and little knick-knacks, two blood elf whelps, one male and one female, bolted past me on the streets. None of those mattered to me. I soon came upon a row of houses, walked up to the door of one, and knocked.

After a few moments, a weary blood elf with red hair opened the door and Glowered at me. She was aging, not exactly senile, but 'middle aged' as the mortals called it. She sighed when she saw me. "Yes, do I know you?"

"Layalith, we have a _big_ problem."

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	23. Chapter 23:Surprisingly Nice

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Massive thanks to dharak for being my beta!**

**Chapter published 10/4/12**

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><p><span>Selriona<span>

Layalith narrowed her eyes. "What _kind_ of problem? And again, who are you?"

"Can I come in? I need to talk to you alone."

She snarled, but stepped aside from the door, letting me in. I shut the door behind me, running a hand through my black hair that gleamed violet if the light hit it just right, a very unnatural color for blood elves. "Is there anyone else here?"

I glanced around the room quickly. It seemed to just be an intersection to the other rooms of the household, with several doorways leading off into other rooms. The scent of bacon permeated the air, making me salivate briefly before I clamped down on my predatory instinct. A single chandelier hung from the ceiling, offering light from its curved gold arches. A red carpet lined the floor, modeled in the typical Silvermoon colors; smooth-ish edges of gold, silver and red, with tiny phoenixes adorning the bottom of the walls.

She shook her head. "No, but whoever you are, you'll have to be quick. My sister's coming back from the market soon." I could vaguely see tiny spikes of light dancing around her hands. It was likely she herself didn't realize it.

"I'm Selriona. You remember me, right? Orgrimmar, little over a century ago, big dragon?" Her eyebrows furrowed for a few minutes, but at last comprehension dawned on her and she smiled a bit, the tiny sparks of magical light around her hands dying off.

"Ah, Selriona, yes. I remember you. Amanthe, as well. I'm sorry, I didn't recognize you."

I shrugged. "We dragons are shape-shifters, what can I say? Anyway, there has been a big, big_, __big_ problem. Amanthe was in Stormwind, and, oh Titans damn them! She was in the Cathedral, when she and several other priests and paladins were abducted by the Burning Legion and brought to Argus."

"_What?_" she hissed. "_Argus?_"

I nodded. "One of our drakes stopped the Legion when they attacked the priests and paladins _here._ You remember that attack, right?"

This time she nodded. "How could I not? It was not even a week ago. The streets are buzzing. You're not saying that, the Legion planned to _abduct_ them, are you?"

"That's exactly what I'm saying. And now they've gone to Stormwind, and won. I don't plan to let them keep that victory. I want you to help me rescue them."

She gave me a blank stare. Then she burst out laughing. "Oh, that's rich. For a moment there, I thought you wanted me to go to Argus to rescue members of the Alliance. Oh man, that's great."

"Except that I'm serious," I said, glaring at her slightly-wrinkled face. "And if you don't want to go to help the Alliance, what about Amanthe? And the Legion's plans for them? How about, instead of rescuing members of the Alliance, we rescue your fellow paladins?"

She frowned. "Dragon, you do realize what you are asking? This is _Argus._ Wouldn't this be something better suited to, I don't know, the Liberality Confederacy, and not _me?_"_  
><em>

"And who's going to be crazy enough to go there? Layalith, what's your history with Amanthe?"

"Well, I met her during the whole Mal'ganis event back in the day. After that she stayed in Orgrimmar for a few years, and so did I. She saved my skin a few times during an Alliance attack - fine. I see your point. I owe her. Fine, I'll go along with your crazy plan. But what, do you expect just the two of us to go in, storm _Argus_, and rescue your friend? If so, you're an idiot, dragon."

I bit down annoyance. The only mortal allowed to call me that was Amanthe. "No, of course I don't. I expect to find more help in Stormwind. We'll be going there, because of someone else that was probably kidnapped."

"Oh?" she asked, intrigued.

"Yes, her great-great-great-grandniece, a girl named Anna." Layalith didn't even raise an eyebrow at how far down the line her descendant was. "She talks about her all the time. Apparently she is a paragon in controlling the Light, able to manipulate it with an ease that puts all others to shame, even forming the Light into solid materials."

She grunted. "Sounds impressive, for a human. What's the point?"

"Layalith, the Burning Legion is targeting those who control the Light. Amanthe told me that she was helping Anna get ready for a pageant _in the Cathedral._ Where the demons invaded. They'll have taken her, and think of what they could do with that kind of power. And she's only six years old. She has _parents_, Layalith. Mortal parents care a lot more about their children than we do; you have a lot less offspring. I plan to get them to help. Old Gods have no fury like that of parents protecting their child. Layalith, I can't bring anyone too powerful. The Legion will _sense _their power and get us. This needs to be a small force bent on infiltration. Nobody too powerful, so I need motivation to balance out the lack of power. Just me coming is pushing the envelope. It's a simple in and out. What do you say?"

She sighed. "Amanthe's my friend too, and this Anna... I am a paladin. I'm sworn to protect the innocent." The blood elf shook her head. "Damn it, this is a terrible idea. We need a plan B, alright? I'll tell my sister everything when she gets back, so that if we're not back within a certain amount of time she can do _something_, _and_ I need time to get my armor and everything."

I frowned, fingering the capacitor around my neck. I didn't like that. "Time is of the essence, Layalith! They're probably undergoing a torment the likes of which we can only dream of! There's no time to waste!"

"Listen, dragon, this is _Argus_ you plan on going to. I don't know if that's fully registered to you or not, but all common sense points to us swimming in demons there! We need to prepare, we need to make sure we're in order. I don't know if you've noticed or not, but I'm not exactly as young as I used to be." I had noticed. I began to wonder if Layalith _was_ such a good idea to bring with me, but I needed someone with a control over the Light for this mission. They'd probably attract demons, but I surely I could find a way to mask that? I couldn't bring anyone too powerful with me. This is going to sound pretty arrogant, but I'm very powerful. I am a dragon, a _twilight_ dragon at that. Verthelion and I were chosen out of eighteen other twilight dragons to have our aging accelerated because we are just that strong. My natural talent with magic surpasses that of even the average Blue, all around I am a force to be reckoned with. especially within the twilight realm.

Which would be a problem here, since in a place like Argus would no doubt be crawling with magical wards and all manner of lovely demonic stuff, and my power would be found quickly. There's no easy way to mask power. You can mask some of it, but only some. I'd still register on any sort of magic detectors. I couldn't bring many with me, and they couldn't be that powerful either. So I'd have to bring people with a reason to go to Argus. Layalith was one. Anna's parents were another two. Hopefully we'd find at least one more candidate on the way.

"Alright," I finally said. "I'll drop by tomorrow at sunrise." I turned my back on her and opened her door, slipping out into the streets of Silvermoon. She had a point. We needed to prepare. I should probably go steal some mana potions or something. And start thinking of a way to _get_ to Argus.

"Hold on, Amanthe," I whispered to myself in our native tongue. "I'm coming for you. Just hang in there."

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><p><span>Amanthe<span>

The exit shut the moment we were all in. The dreadlord stayed behind to herd us in, and when the last of us were inside, the Legion device over the building's only visible exit covered the exit in a crackling field of green energy. Nobody was eager to test it out.

The room we were in was a hallway. Tall and narrow, with strange glowing yellow rocks embedded into the wood offering a strangely soothing light. It lead to a giant cylinder in what I could only assume was the middle, with maybe a dozen such 'spokes' extending out from it. To our left and right were more curved hallways, making me imagine us inside a giant wheel. The entire place was wooden, the pale planks bolted together with strange green nails, forming a smooth floor illuminated in the strangely soothing light of the yellow rocks. How it didn't catch fire in such a hostile environment was beyond me.

As soon as the dreadlord sealed the exit, despair fell on us. A few people hugged each other, whispering quiet reassurances. Me, I fell to me knees, gently setting down Anna on the floor. Tears blurred my vision. Argus... I was on Argus. Whether she couldn't hear me, or had abandoned me, Selriona wouldn't be coming to get me. Nobody would know what happened, where we'd gone. It would just be a tragedy at the Cathedral, where two dozen of its members were killed by the Legion...

I let out a choked sob, something wet sliding down my left cheek. I'm going to die here. Nobody can help me. Poor Anna, poor me. Everything I'd hoped to accomplish, my spells, my education, my best friend, all yanked away in moments. Even as I knelt, I couldn't quite process that I was on Argus. But I knew that I was here, and that I was at the mercy of the demonic legions...

I let my head fall into my hands. Despair solidified in my heart like a stone. My throat was dry and clenched as I sobbed. No hope. No hope at all. We're at their mercy. Their _playthings,_ any nothing we can do to fight will make a difference. I don't know how long our group just sat there, wallowing in misery. I don't know how long I cried, only that at the end I was simply sobbing silently as someone knelt next to me.

"Amanthe," Jason began. "It's alright."

"How can you say that?" I asked, my voice cracking. "We're on _Argus!_ We're all going to die!"

"Amanthe," he began. I looked over to him, and noticed that he too had tear streaks running down his reddened face. I turned back to looking at Anna. "Don't lose hope. We'll, we'll find a way out of this. The demons can't stand against the power of the Light."

"Don't give me that!" I snapped. "We're on Argus! What amounts to the Legion's home world! What are we gonna do, _fight_ our way out? Jason, we've lost." I sobbed again, stroking Anna's white hair. "We've - we've lost."

"But that's no reason to sit around wallowing in despair. Let's at least make the most of what we've got." Out of the corner of my eyes I saw him hold out his hand. "Come on, let's go see how big this place is. Who knows, maybe we'll find something we can use to our advantage."

"We won't," I wailed. "The demons built this place! There's no escape, no hope..." My voice cracked.

"Maybe so, but that's no reason to sit down and die! Amanthe, please. We have to try." He paused. "For Anna's sake, you have to try."

My lips quavered, and I fought down tears, looking over at him. "Alright," I whispered. "I'll try." I gently scooped up Anna and followed Jason towards the middle of the 'wheel'. Almost everyone else stood there frozen in fear, save for one other person walking along the outside of the wheel. I couldn't make out who.

The middle of the wheel was about twice as wide as my home. A faint ray of light shone down from a narrow hole in the top, far too narrow for anyone to go out. My assumptions from earlier were correct; a dozen hallways reached outwards from it, maybe fifty meters long. Down the one we came out of, I could see the glowing green light of the force field keeping us in, its light eerie and utterly unwelcome given the emotional apocalypse I experienced. Down the other corridors I saw what looked like _rooms. _Along one of the center room's curved walls was a sort of ramp connected to a hole. It had raised sides and dipped down into a basin. Clean, sparkling water poured out of the hole, down the ramp, and into the basin, where it was no doubt drained by a hole. I was still too much in shock to even ponder why there was _clean water_ on _Argus._

"Come on, Amanthe," Jason whispered. "Lets go check out one of those rooms." Silently I nodded, following after my mentor. The first room we came to had simple wooden doors on them, only slightly taller than me. This made it so that Jason had to crouch down under the doorframe after he opened it. Inside, the room was... surprisingly homey. I'd expected something like chains, and a torture chamber. But instead it was a cozy room with a fluffy double-bed with blue cushions pushed against the far wall, and what looked like a _wardrobe _off to the side. There were none of the glowing yellow rocks here, light was instead provided by glowing green structures built into the walls, with knobs on them. Perhaps to control the lighting? Why?

We walked in, and then Anna began to stir. I crossed the distance to the twin beds and set her down, watching her slowly recover from my spell. I didn't notice it until I put her down, but my arms were _sore. _How could such a little girl weigh so much?

I knelt by her side as her red eyes opened. She gave out a startled scream, but I quickly held her hand, making her calm down. "Shh, shh. It's me, Anna. It's me." Her eyes began tearing up again, and I moved her to a sitting position and sat beside her. I let her rest her head on my lap as she cried, and cried, and cried. Jason watched me from the doorway, and I invited my trainer over next to me. I stroked Anna's white hair and kissed the back of her head. After a few minutes, she worked up the self-control to talk.

"Manthy, I'm scared," she said, head still buried in my lap.

"I know, Anna," I said, gently brushing her hair. I struggled to keep my voice level. "I'm scared too. Do you want to come with us, explore the rest of this room?" She nodded, picking her head up. I got off the bed and offered her my hand. "Alright, follow me then." She took my hand. Light, she's just a girl. She doesn't deserve this.

Nothing added up. The eleven other spokes each had a 'bedroom' at their ends, identical to the one we were just in. There was even one hidden in one of the 'spokes' of our wheel, making for a total of twelve bedrooms, or twenty four beds. Enough for all of us, minus Anna. I didn't like that. Not one bit. It was too convenient. They'd been planning this for a long time. But why? Several of the other spokes had rooms made of a shiny black stone. with clean water flowing through a person-sized basin, and a deep tunnel going way, way, _way_ down. A fall down there could be fatal. They had iron doors that could be locked from the inside.

As we left that sixth and apparently last one of those, my head seemed to _split open.__  
><em>

The entire world turned red and fell sideways, angry ruby light flashing and pulsing like the world's most hostile alarm. I whimpered in pain, clawing at the wooden floors. Anna was at my side, crying and shouting my name, but it seemed so distant through the _enormous_ headache, rendering me all but catatonic. I felt a cool hand on my face, and some warm magic, unwelcome amid the burning agony of my migraine. I heard someone whispering a few words, and then a faint whisper of magic coiling around in my mind. Tension flared behind my ears, then died down, as did the headache. I rolled on to my stomach, propped myself up on my elbows, gagged, and threw up the few contents of my stomach. Anna scooted back from me and squealed in disgust.

I got to my feet, swaying, when a gentle wave of healing magic rolled over me. Most of my nausea eased, but there was still a throbbing headache. I looked towards Jason. "Ugh, what did you do?"

"You just screamed and fell down. Some of my mana came back, so I looked into your soul. You seem to be telepathically bound to someone, did you know that?"

I bit my tongue. No sense keeping secrets, not in this accursed place. "Yes, I'll explain later. What did you do?"

"Well," he said, placing a finger to his chin. "I'm guessing that being so far from the other person, the link gave you both headaches. Nobody knows just _how_ far Argus is from Azeroth, so that explains the delay in the headache."

"Alright," I said, nodding. That made sense. I could barely stand up straight when Selriona or I went to Outland, so it only made sense I would be in utter agony on Argus. My eyes stung at the thought of my draconic friend, who would never know what happened to me, who probably thought I was dead...

I fought down tears as best I could. I had to stay strong, for Anna's sake. Jason continued. "I blocked off the link, and healed you. Used up practically all my mana, though, after that demon drained it. The link's still there, but it won't be doing anything. You can't use it, either."

"Fat lot of good it does anyway," I said ruefully. "I can't get a message to the other end anyway. I tried." My face dropped, and my voice fell to a whisper. "We're trapped here." Anna hugged my waist, and I gently patted her head.

"Are you going to tell me?" I looked up at him from my brother's descendant. "Who's on the other end of the link?"

_Yes._ Why shouldn't I? Why keep any secrets? That I was a Twilight Dragonsworn? Of the truth of my Flight? Of me being a shadow priest? Over a hundred and sixty years old? What did any of it matter? We were never getting out of here. "Yes," I said, my voice cracking. I cleared my throat. "Yes, I will. But... later. Let's see what the Legion wants with us first." Anna shook against my leg when I mentioned that, and I stroked the side of her head. "Come on," I said. "Let's explore the rest of this place."

We did, but there was nothing else to see. Twelve bedrooms, and six... I don't know what they were. If I didn't know better, I'd think they're restrooms. In the middle was a source of fresh water, and a tiny, _tiny_ hole in the ceiling not even Anna could fit through. Eventually, the two dozen of us stopped milling around and coalesced inside the middle of the building, talking, not exactly animatedly, but with a lot more vigor than before. Mostly pertaining to _how fucking screwed we are. _I couldn't find it in me to talk to them. What was going to happen to us? Were we just going to be kept in here, given water, so that we'd starve to death? Oh by the Light, please no! I had... I thought I was going to live forever! I couldn't help but keep imagining what would happen on Azeroth; Selriona mourning my death, Mig'jan losing his head among the Alliance and being executed. Even worse, I kept seeing myself starved to death, bones sticking through my skin and my face jaunt, empty eyes staring at the dark clouds -

I bit down another sob.

Suddenly, without any warning, there was a massive flash of demonic energy in the middle of the room. A magical wind blew over me, burning away what magic my body had regenerated. When the black mist cleared, there stood the same black and red dreadlord that had guided us here, but now with an escort of a dozen felhounds. The dark beasts growled with hunger, their antenna tips twitching with a hunger for magical energy. Besides the dreadlord stood two succubi, demonic women dressed in scandalous leather bodice. Bat wings unfurled from their backs, with very sharp looking talons on their tips. Two horns curled upwards from each of their heads, and their eyes were like glowing blue crystals. A thin tail curled out from behind them, and their legs were spiked goat feet. They also both held a curled up whip in their hands, the entire length barbed and each barb serrated.

I whimpered.

A single hand gesture from the dreadlord created a flickering shell of fel magic around the demons, lest anybody get too dumb to survive. The dreadlord smiled, and opened his mouth. "Ah, I see our guests are getting settled into their new home." He's mocking us, he's _mocking_ us. "Allow me to explain your situation. As I have told you, you are here on Argus. And now." He snapped a clawed finger, and I felt something in me drain, a frailty settling over me. "None of you can use magic. You will stay this way until we feel you can be trusted with magic again." _TRUSTED? He's the demon holding us hostage on their world!_

Somebody, the same paladin that had attacked the dreadlord before, voiced my thoughts. "_You_ trust _us?_ We're at your mercy! If anything we should trust you! And know that no matter what you do to me, you'll -never- break me!"

The tall, winged demon chuckled, making cold spells race up and down my spine. "Oh, how little you know of our plans for you. You think we brought you here to be tortured, and to break? Oh, how wonderful. No, we'll only break one of you, as a message to everyone else." My heart stopped. _No, no. Not me, please._ One of the succubi looked my way and grinned, showing off razor sharp teeth, and flicked her whip.

He continued. "As for what we _want_ from you, well, first you need to know what we'll _give _you. You will be provided with food and water. Water will flow here, and food will regularly be dropped from the hole above you. Sanitation mechanisms are also in place, as many of you have seen, as are bedding arrangements. You will be kept well nourished, we will largely leave you to your own devices, and in return you will fall in love, have children, and teach them that _we_ are the supreme good, that Azeroth does not exist. That this is all that has ever been, and all that will ever be. You will also teach them to have utmost faith in your... _Light. _We _will_ be watching. If you so much as whisper to your descendants anything else, you will suffer... _dire_ consequences."

Near-silent murmurs erupted through us, and I bent down to hold Anna, who looked up at the dreadlord and shook gently. What did he mean by that? What was going on?

"But first, to teach you all a lesson." He looked over the succubus on his left and nodded. She strode forward, whip flicking at her side... _right at me. _My heart froze. I backed up, letting go of Anna and moving back to the wall. No, no not me! I'd heard of what succubi did to their victims. The greatest sadists, masters of torture. Fates worse than death. I couldn't let this happen, no, no I couldn't. I tried to call my magic, but nothing came to me. For a moment I was afraid the succubus would go for Anna instead of me, but the demon simply pushed past the shaking girl as if she were nothing. She kept coming closer. She stopped close to me and the whip flickered in her hands, magic propelling it to wrap around my hand, the serrated barbs biting my flesh and making me wince. The succubus smirked, and began to pull me towards the dreadlord.

"_Manthy!_" Anna exploded with light. My entire world lit up with yellow light that was brighter than the sun, but didn't burn my eyes. Someone let out a scream of pain that sounded unnervingly erotic, and the pressure around my hands vanished. The light died down, and I saw that Anna was now facing me, panting, yellow sparks around her hands fading. She looked stunned. The succubus was gone, and the other demons looked shocked beneath their protective shell of magic. Nobody moved. The other priests and paladins, myself included, stared at Anna dumbfounded. The demons seemed to look past her to where the succubus had been moments before the little girl, the little six year old girl, vaporized her. A low chuckling filled the air, until it grew to malicious, maniacal laughter with a razor-sharp echo. The felhounds snorted along with the dreadlord, and the one remaining succubus gave us all a flirty laugh.

"Ah, how excellent. I see we did not make a mistake, taking you as well." The dreadlord looked down at the succubus and spoke in a rasping, guttural language. I knew in the depths of my soul it would give me nightmares for years. The succubus nodded, and the dreadlord stuck out his hand. Something like a fishing net extended out of his hand, made of dark, dark blue shadows, and wrapped around the paladin that had tried to escape. He screamed in pain and struggled against the net, but the dreadlord simply pulled him under the fel-energy shield, and let go. Arcane energy lit up the demon's hand, and with a flash of magic, all of them vanished, taking the fel-shield with them.

I rushed forward and knelt to Anna's level, wrapping my arms around her, my thanks flowing out of my like a river. She'd just saved me from a fate worse than death. "Oh, thank the Titans, you saved me!" Anna didn't say anything back, just kept her arms wrapped around my neck. I was vaguely aware of some people watching us, but I didn't care. I was safe, I was safe and -

- at what cost? Oh that poor man, doomed to torture because I didn't face it! But, what could I do? I, I couldn't sacrifice myself like that. I - I'm not brave enough.

Anna yawned in my arms, and I stood, lifting her with me. "Come on, Anna. Let's get you to bed."

"I'm not tired! I don't wanna sleep here!"

I'd already left the central chamber, heading towards one of the bedrooms. "I know, Anna. But you need to be rested up for whatever comes tomorrow. I don't think they'll hurt us. They want something from us that they can't get if they hurt us. For now, let's just get you to bed."

I opened the door and walked in, laying Anna down on the blue double-bed. I walked up to the doors and closed them, then returned to Anna's side. "Okay, Manthy. Please, can you sleep here?"

I smiled, tucking her in up to her neck. She grabbed the blanket in her hands, gazing up at me hopefully. "Of course, sweety. You just sleep tight, I'll keep the big bad demons away."

"Thanks," she said, closing her eyes. "Night, Manthy."

"Night, Anna." Despite having woken up not one hour ago, she quickly fell asleep. I stroked her cheek lightly, making her turn over in her sleep. The door creaked open, then clicked shut. Somebody walked up besides me, but I knew it wasn't a demon; I'd _feel_ it if it were. They have a presence. I turned my head over to see who it was. "Hey, Jason."

"Hello, Amanthe." He sat down on the bed, making sure not to sit on the side Anna slept on. "So, what?"

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Do you think they were telling the truth about what would happen to us? The demons, I mean. That we'd be given food and water, and that they'd leave us alone. I mean, it just doesn't seem like something they'd do. It's almost like we're honored guests, or something. _That's_ just absurd. What do you think of all this?"

"They want something from us," I told him, brushing away a strand of blonde hair from where it had settled over my left eye. "But I don't understand. What can we have that they want? That they need twenty five of us for? It doesn't make sense. They're _demons._ They don't _trade _with us. But why are they giving us anything, then?"

"Amanthe, didn't you here that dreadlord? They want us to fall in love, have children, and raise them with the illusion that the Burning Legion is _good,_" he spat. He said the last word as if it burned his tongue. "They want us to brainwash our children, so that _they_ can brainwash their children, and so on down the line for _who knows_ how long, and then use them for... for... I don't know! They need to keep us comfortable, because we _know_ when we're suffering, and no amount of brainwashing can get around that."

I did a quick mental recall. "One, five, ten... oh by the Light. They brought us in even numbers."

Jason raised an eyebrow, getting off the bed. I stopped leaning on its wooden frame and straightened out my back. My spine popped a few times, and I winced. Had I been still that long, watching Anna fall asleep? "What do you mean," Jason asked. "By 'even numbers'?"

"They brought twelve men and twelve women here. They seem to have improvised, bringing Anna. Jason, they're _breeding_ us." That thought made me sick. Breeding us, like so much cattle. Deprived of that which makes us who we are, nothing more than our abilities, not our personalities. _'Pair those two together__'_, I thought. _'I want one with black hair, good muscle-tone...'_ I choked down another sob. "They're breeding us like _animals. _Oh Titans, what are we going to do? We're all so... _screwed._"

"But breeding us for what? What do they - oh." Comprehension briefly hid the horror present on his face. That didn't make me feel any better. "He said that they also want us to teach our descendants to have utmost faith in the Light. They want mortals as strong in the Light as possible."

"But that doesn't make any sense!" I half-shouted. When Anna stirred, I dropped my voice back to normal. "It makes no sense. Why would the Burning Legion purposely make people strong in the Light, the greatest weapon _against_ them? What could they possibly use them for?" It had to do something with the magic amplifier. Maybe to make the most use out of it. _That_ wasn't a comforting thought, but what was around here? Use the magic amplifier for what? "Oh... that's not good."

"What's not good?" he asked. As he said this, I felt the constriction on my magic tighten, no doubt to compensate for Anna's power.

I shook my head. "I'll... tell you tomorrow. Tonight. Whatever time it is. I promise you, tomorrow I'll tell you all of my secrets." My throat knotted. Oh, how well _that_ conversation would go. But, I owed it to my teacher. Not like we were getting off this world. "But first, let's just get some sleep. I feel we'll need it."

He nodded. "Poor Oldritch. He's the one they took to torture, you know."

I winced. "I... I'm a coward. I let him get taken. He's suffering unimaginable anguish this very moment, and it's all my fault."

He rested a hand on my shoulder. "I don't blame you, Amanthe. Against the stuff of nightmares, few have the courage to stand firm and not yield." He looked towards Anna. "I'll sleep on Anna's left, you can sleep on her right."

I nodded. "I'll center her." I reached the bed in one step and carefully placed my hands under the albino girl's back, moving her to the middle of the bed. Her eyes fluttered under her eyelids, but other than that she didn't react. I laid on the cushions by her right, pulled the blanket over me, and closed my eyes. The green light dimmed to nothing, and a moment later I felt weight shift on the far end of the bed. But by then I was already asleep.

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><p>In my dreams, my head <em>hurt.<em> It was like something was trying to push into it, but was simply unable to. I was in the same room I'd fallen asleep in, sitting in the middle of the bed. Anna and Jason were both gone, but that didn't bother me because I _knew_ I was dreaming. Perhaps it had something to do with the flickering, smoking red letters in the air before me that said YOU ARE DREAMING. The letters flickered once, twice, and then vanished. I cocked my head to the side, confused, but rubbed my hands together to get feeling into the dream. Sure enough, the haze around the dream faded, and it felt entirely as if I were awake. My head still hurt, though. I glanced around the room, details such as knobs in wood or cracks on light-crystals fading as I focused my attention elsewhere, then reappearing when I looked back towards them.

My head hurt more and more. I clutched my hands to my head and groaned. The room around me began to flicker. One moment I was on Argus, the next I was high up in the sky, clouds forming a dark blue floor beneath me, with the occasional crack letting me see a vast ocean beneath me. The White Lady was full in the starry skies, bathing the world in its silvery light. The two flickered incredibly fast, making my eyes hurt, until both vanished. I was back in Grim Batol, but it was falling apart. Not structurally, but vast sections were simply _black_, giant voids swallowing up various stairwells or walkways. It was also mysteriously absent of Twilight dragons, but considering that it was a dream, I decided to let it slide. Some of the voids began to expand, nearing the narrow walkway I stood on. As they grew, a figure materialized in front of me, first nearly invisible, then transparent, then opaque. My headache kept getting worse.

It was a Red dragon, with brilliant red scales, horns as big as me, and a thin white line down the right side of their back. Bat-like wings flapped silently, and I got the vague impression in my mind it was a female. She opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. The dragon seemed to realize this and shook her head side to side angrily, making the flap on her neck also shake. The black voids expanded dramatically, and as they did I began to hear the dragon speak, but it was so faint. I thought at one point she said 'can you hear me'.

I called back. "What?" She gave out a silent roar, and the black voids expanded even more, engulfing everything in my dream but a single patch of stone and the dragon. My head hurt so much I could barely think. When she spoke, I could hear her, but she began flickering quickly, her colors melting into each other like watercolor paints.

"Alright, that should - no, no this was so hard to set up! Amanthe, I'm - !" Then she vanished entirely, and I settled into the unconscious realm of deep sleep.

My last conscious thought before passing out was wondering who that was, but feeling she was somewhat familiar...

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><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<strong>


	24. Chapter 24:Petty Conflict

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Thanks to dharak for being my beta.**

**Also, I've placed up a new one-shot for Warcraft, Forgotten Eons. Go check it out if you haven't already :-)**

**Chapter published 10/14/12**

**Quick Edit:I forgot to mention. I will not include things from Mists, because if you check the A/N at Chapter 38 in Coup de What?, you'll see I go on a little... rant. Long story short, I don't consider anything 4.3 and on as 'canon'. I'm sorry, but 4.3 made me lose any hope I have in Blizz's ability to tell a convincing story.**

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><p><span>Selriona<span>

The dream re-stabilized into my cavern in Grim Batol. Nalestrasza shook herself in irritation, then roared. "I'm guessing it didn't work?" I asked her.

Her glare could've leveled mountains. "You don't say?" With an aggravated snarl she slammed her tail-club on the ground. "She's just too far away from me to set up a good connection with her! And this magical... aura from Argus isn't helping. I hate to say this, well, I don't really, but with the link blocked, and me unable to open a stable shared dream, you won't be able to contact Amanthe. _At all._"

I sighed, scratching the ground with my claws. Despite being solid stone, the ground gave way as if it were snow. "Great, that's just great. Were you able to get anything out of her head? Anything at all?"

"She's scared," Nalestrasza deadpanned.

I glared at her. "Anything that's_ not_ blatantly obvious? Oh, she's scared. Of course she's scared! She's on Argus!"

A bolt of lightning struck me in the face, making me blink. "Shut up, Selriona," my Red self snarled. "Anyway, she's scared, and more importantly, confused. But even_ I_ can't fathom why she'd be confused. Perhaps someone showed great sacrifice, someone she was used to seeing as selfish? I don't know, there's too many variables. I need to wake you up now."

"What?" I asked, perplexed. "Why?"

"Because at about this time Layalith will be ready to leave. Talk to you later, my Twilight self." With that, the scene abruptly changed. No fading out, no 'world turning black'. One moment I was dreaming, the next I was laying in a guest bed in Layalith and her sister's house.

I rolled out of bed and heard discussion coming from downstairs. "Alright sis. Be safe. If you're not back in a month, I'll arrange for the... ceremony."

"Thanks." I walked downstairs to see Layalith, dressed in her golden paladin armor with her two-handed red sword strapped to her back, resting a gauntlet on her sister's shoulder. Her sister was roughly the same age as the paladin, and they were so similar I could've sworn they're twins. The same red hair, same blue eyes, same everything. Maybe they were twins...

Layalith had been kind enough to let me have the guest bedroom for the night while she got herself ready and told her sister, Sharyla, the situation. I took the opportunity to see if Nalestrasza could set up a shared dream with Amanthe; no such luck.

I coughed forcefully, making them both turn their heads to look at me. "It's time to go, Layalith." She nodded, and I walked over to her. Before I could open a portal, however, her sister placed a hand on my shoulder. I looked over to her.

Her eyes drilled into my soul. "You keep my sister safe, dragon." It wasn't a request, it was an order. Twins indeed.

"I will." She let go of me, and I extended my magic, pulling both Layalith and I into the twilight realm. She looked around for a moment, startled. "This is the twilight realm," I explained to her. She glowed brightly but... not as bright as Amanthe would've. Getting old must be terrible. "Here is where we are strongest, and where we are safest. I'll bring us to Stormwind, and while there I'll put a human illusion on you so that, when we go back to the physical realm, you won't be _attacked._ We'll go to Anna's parents and get them to come. Sound good?" I asked.

She nodded. "As stupid as this endeavor is, that is a sound plan. Let's get on with it, then."

"Good," I said, calling up my magic. I shaped it, molded it, found the anchor point, and opened the portal to Stormwind. The silvery-blue portal was tainted by the violet haze of the twilight realm, turning it a murky, foggy indigo. I gestured over to the portal. "Mortals first."

Layalith looked my way. "And you're certain I won't be attacked?"

"Positive," I said, annoyed. Was she _doubting_ my abilities? "You'll be perfectly safe. Now come on, we need to hurry!"

"Fine, fine." She jumped into the portal, and was swallowed by a bright silver flash. I followed after her, the portal's sickly light enveloping me, pushing me through the Twisting Nether. A moment later, I was in the Mage Tower. Layalith looked around carefully, examining every nook and cranny of the room. For a moment I thought she was just curious, but I also considered that she was memorizing every detail she could, to give to the Horde if - when - they attacked the city. _Again._ I shook my head. Whatever, it didn't matter. I was beyond that conflict, and I'd neither help the Alliance by making her stop, or the Horde by encouraging her.

"Let's get going," I called to her, making her stop analyzing the chamber. Already my form was shifting; my ears shortened, my face became less angular, my limbs more muscular. In a moment, I was in my human form. "I _think_ I know where Anna's parents are, so we'll find a dark alley, I'll place an illusion over you, and go into the physical realm."

The blood elf raised an eyebrow. "A dark alley, dragon? In an _Alliance _city? _Really?_"

"Relax, you have me to protect you, if that's what you're worried about." I spread my hands apart, an arc of dark blue lightning crackling between them. "You'll be _fine._"

"You _have_ done this before, right? Illusions?"

"Oh, pssh, yeah, I use illusions all the time! I'm using one now."

She narrowed her eyes. "And... have you ever placed one on someone else?"

"Not... directly... no. Does an Orb of Deception count?" Her plated hand met her forehead. "Just... just follow me!" I hissed at her, my pupils contracting into slits for a moment. While we're here arguing over my magic, _Amanthe's in mortal danger! _I stormed towards the portal, the mortal following me. After a few more minutes of walking, I found a dark alley in the Trade District. Shifting a portion of my essence out of the twilight realm, I saw that it was abandoned. In the twilight realm, I turned to Layalith. In the physical realm, I tapped my foot._  
><em>

In both realms, I cracked my knuckles. "Here goes nothing," I said. I coalesced my magic around myself, as if I were turning myself into a kaldorei. However, as my skin began to turn purple, a comforting color, I directed the magic towards Layalith, as if it were a shadowmend. A tiny shadow nova exploded around her, sending dark mist flying away from us in a perfect ring, and when it was done she was a night elf. She had lavender skin, no eye tattoos, and pine-green hair. It was a bit strange to see a night elf in paladin armor, but I ignored that.

"Take a look, it's done," I told her.

She raised her arms to her face, and flinched when the shape of her head didn't line up with what she was used to. "Am I - ?"

"A night elf, yes. Don't give me that look, it's the closest thing to sin'dorei." She Glowered at me again, making my left eye twitch. Had she _always_ been this stubborn? Or was that another side-effect of getting old? "It's only for a short time, deal with it. I take a mortal form all the time." I began to glow violet, and I pulled both of us into the physical realm.

"Do you know where these parents are?"

"Hmm, no... but I _do_ know somebody who does. My mate Pallasion's Dragonsworn, Mig'jan. A troll."

"A troll? In Stormwind?"

"Well, he's under human guise, so yeah. A troll in Stormwind. Let me see if I can sniff him out." I raised my nose and took in a deep breath, analyzing the scents. A thousand scents assaulted me at once. Plastic, rubber, iron, wood, sweat, grime, water, fish, dwarves, humans, elves, draenei, gnomes, pets. I had no chance distinguishing them. _I could use some help, Nalestrasza! This is important!__  
><em>

She didn't reply audibly; she couldn't. But after a second, the barrage of scents narrowed down, then narrowed again. I could imagine her eyeroll. _Really, you can't distinguish the smell of _one _troll in a city as small as _Stormwind? But sure enough, the distinct smell of Darkspear troll reached my nose, smelling of the woods, sweat and, in this case, fire, water, earth, and air. North.

I nodded. "Alright, I got him. Follow me." Wordlessly, she did. The city of Stormwind had lost a lot of splendor since I was here as a drake. While still crowded populated, I estimated the population was down to a third of what it had been. From where I phased the two of us into the physical realm, I could see the ramparts of Stormwind. Neltharion's claws were _still_ burned into them, the stone glowing red and scorched black, its gentle sizzling audible even from this distance. The stones around it were a pale gray, webbed with cracks like spider webs, presumably from catapults, cannons, and the like. Still, it was a sharp contrast to the claw marks. I had no doubt in my mind the Alliance had tried to remove the marks before, by carving out the burnt stone and replacing it, but just like before, there they were. The Aspect of Death had left his permanent mark on this city as if to say, _That's right, you belong to me._

Layalith looked like she was about to have a stroke. Her purple skin turned a shade lighter, and her hands twitched, Holy Light shivering between her fingers. No doubt she felt like she stuck out like a sore claw. Surely the illusion couldn't be that perfect. Surely, the Alliance knew she was here, and were torturing her psychologically.

The denizens themselves were jovial enough, walking to and fro, chattering excitedly in a flurry of voices that I had trouble distinguishing. Not that they mattered. But it made me sick. How could they be so happy? _Amanthe_ was on _Argus! _

In spite of my internal turmoil, my nose, guided by Nalestrasza, soon brought me to the Canals. A human male leaned against a building, in ragged brown rags. The smell of troll shaman reached its apex, and then the rest of the city's scent poured into my nostrils. He seemed to be asleep, but I spoke his name anyhow.

"Mig'jan." He cracked an eye open, then both, revealing emerald orbs.

"Ya, mon?" he asked in Common. He sounded anxious, as if he were afraid I was about to stick a sword in his throat. Seeing as how he'd recently been Horde, and was now in the Alliance capital, it wasn't hard to imagine.

"I need to ask you a few questions about Amanthe," I asked him in Orcish.

He blinked a few times, narrowed his eyes, and tilted his head to the side, seemingly unable to tell what language I'd spoken in. Finally, he decided I'd spoken in Orcish. "Who are you? And what you be wantin' to know 'bout 'manthe?"

"I'm Selriona," I answered, then motioned to the night elf by my side. "This is Layalith. We need to ask you a few questions about the girl Amanthe was babysitting, Anna."

He shrugged. "Not much ta know, mon. They're... they're both dead. I'm sorry."

I shook my head, trying to forget that he might be true. _T__hey might be dead. I don't know what they're going through. I could be going after a corpse. _"They're _not_ dead. I know this because Amanthe contacted me a few hours ago. They've been kidnapped to Argus. We're going to go get them back," I said.

The troll's eyes widened, his skin turning pale with panic. "Eh-_wah? _Now, when ya say 'we', you're talking about..."

"Me, Layalith, and Anna's parents."

He deflated, color returning to his face. "Oh, that's a relief. Don't wanna be dragged off there, no offense, mon. So, I'm gonna guess you can't find Anna's parents?" I nodded. "Well, that's not too hard. I've followed 'manthe to their house once before. Anyway, they're not too far. Just continue on towards Old Town, take the second right, the first left, then the third right. That'll lead ya right to 'em."

I curtsied. "Thanks, Mig'jan. You really don't know how much this means to me." Next to me, Layalith snorted.

He shrugged. "Hey, if I let 'manthy die, it'll haunt me for the rest of my life." A pause. "And then haunt me in the afterlife. I'll try ta keep a watch on ya with the spririts, 'kay? Be safe." He leaned back against the building and closed his eyes. A very good illusion. If I hadn't known better, I'd assume he was a common mortal vagabond.

Layalith sighed. "We're going into the most demon-infested world in the Great Dark Beyond, troll. Safe is the last thing we'll be." I flashed her a look, and without further word we continued to the home of Anna's parents. Just as Mig'jan said, we took the second right, heading away from the Canals and deeper into the Trade District. The first left brought us down a narrow corridor of blue-roofed houses. Some had little potted gardens on their front porches. Others had board games on tables on their front porches. Others didn't even _have _front porches, their walls falling into disrepair as money was funded into the pointless, perpetual war with the Horde. All things considered, though, it could've been worse.

And both sides of the conflict were running out of steam. The simple fact is a population can not sustain prolonged war because in war, people die, and eventually a faction will run out of people to fight with. Both the Horde and the Alliance would either come to a resolution, or be utterly destroyed. _Especially_ if the Legion was up to something.

The third right brought us to a two story building. The lights behind the yellow-tinted windows were off. Combined with the shade of multiple rooftops and a not quite clear, not quite cloudy day, the stained glass resembled rotten banana peels. The door was bolted shut, as if to say, _'Go away and leave us alone.'_

I walked up to the door and knocked. I knocked again. Then a third time. Nobody answered. I frowned. I understood mortals would mourn their children when they died, sometimes for the rest of their lives. Were they even here? Or were they at a funeral? Mortals didn't set up funerals that quick, did they? Regardless, they'd be mourning, but we didn't have_ time_ to mourn, not when there's still a chance. I looked around to make sure nobody was watching. I grabbed the lock and, fading partially into the twilight realm for strength, squeezed. The iron, while not exactly corroded, did bear a few frayed spots. I grimaced and squeezed.

_Ka-crunch._

With a terrible, chills-down-the-tail noise, my strength tore apart the locking mechanisms. I shook my hand, which had turned red from effort where I squeezed.

The door creaked open into the house.

We stepped in.

It was dark inside; with only stained glass windows providing shaded light, and no candles, lanterns, or even a torch burning. Just standing in the entry room was dark. Further on, a mortal would be blind. Lucky me. And even so, I didn't need my eyes. I could hear the sound of shifting people coming from upstairs, could smell a human and... a lot of salt water. My heart went out to them. Losing children was terrible. The sound of shifting stopped, which led me to believe they thought we were here to rob them, attack them, or both. This would need to be handled delicately.

"Hello, Derek? Anastasia?" I asked, remembering the names Amanthe had spoken so energetically about. The only blood family she had. "I need to talk to you. It's important." Layalith flashed me a confused look, but I paid her no mind, instead focusing on the noise. Above me there were whispers. Faint whispers, too faint for even me to make out. That meant a door was in between us. Faint whispers, then the not so faint sound of one pair of feet trying to stealthily walk along a wooden floor that doubled as a ceiling. The footsteps stopped, then I heard them again, coming towards us, above the hallway to our right. A half-hearted grunt of effort, the sound of an arrow being notched...

That wasn't good. I began to prepare my magic, and looked down at my capacitor. For being a magical artifact filled with arcane energy, it wasn't doing much in the way of illumination. Stupid magic.

I could smell the scent of a human, male, walking along the ceiling to our right, coming closer. They went down one step, and I could hear the bow's string being pulled back. I flexed my fingers, already placing an invisible barrier on myself and Layalith. But it would be better to resolve this peacefully; I'm bringing these people _with_ me.

"There's no need to be alarmed, I just want to talk. I have information about your daughter." The footsteps down the stairs stopped, and the string relaxed. "I want to talk to you about her. Can you come down to talk? And put down the bow." A moment for being startled about how I knew about the bow, a slight clatter as it was placed down. Then Anna's parents came downstairs.

The male had dark skin covered in small cuts. Brown hair, with streaks of silver fingering across them. His green eyes were dull, like the color of slime. He had on pale blue night-robes which made no sense since it was... I checked my internal clock. The middle of the day. In his hands was a wooden bow, with a notched arrow hanging loosely from the string. Beside him was the female, who wore a pink nightgown. I hadn't heard her come down; was she really that quiet? Her eyes were a cold brown, like that of wet mud, and her hair was the same color as her mate's. Just not as much gray. She had two daggers gripped tightly in her hands, and she had _far_ too little scent for my liking. Still, what little scent I could gather was completely mortal.

She whispered, "Who are you?"

I held my hands up in the mortal '_I come in peace'_ gesture. "Can we sit down somewhere? It's going to be a lot to take in."

Derek nodded. "This way," he said, climbing off the stairwell. He and his mate went down the hallway to our right, with us following them. They turned a left and entered a dining room, connected to a kitchen. The dining room was rectangular, but not oblong. On the far right end were two posters with the pictures of various herbs and spices plastered all over them. Before that was the main attraction; a rectangular mahogany table with six chairs around it and rounded corners. A lantern hung over it but it, like all other sources of light, was off. The two humans stumbled their way into the room, groped for the lantern, and one of them - it was too dark for even me to tell which - managed to turn it on. I blinked when the lantern flared to life, casting a spot of yellow light in the otherwise night-dark house. I took another step into the dining room and saw, on a wall pushed over to my side, a series of cabinets with china plates stacked on top of each other.

The humans each took a seat next to each other. Layalith and I also sat. I was across Derek, and the disguise blood elf was across from Anastasia.

"You said you had information about our _daughter?_" Derek asked, his voice cracking sharply at the end. He pounded a fist against his chest. "Sorry, excuse me."

"Alright," Layalith sighed from next to me. "I give up! What in the name of the Light is he _saying?_"_  
><em>

It suddenly occurred to me that Layalith didn't know Common. The corner of my mouth twitched, and I turned to her. "Um, I'll translate it after for you." I turned back to Anna's parents. "Layalith here, um, doesn't know Common. Anyway, your daughter. I hope you're ready, because this is going to be a lot of information to take in." I took a deep breath. "Amanthe and Anna are not dead. They, along with some others, have been kidnapped by the Burning Legion to Argus. I plan to go rescue them."

"She's... our little angel's _alive?_" the mother asked haltingly. "And... what did you say? Argus? Oh, oh no. She's doomed."

"Not doomed. We can't go and storm Argus, that's completely out of the question. We _can,_ however, send in a small force bent on stealthy infiltration, get your daughter, and get out. The people going can't be _too_ powerful, or the Legion will sense us. I need motivation to balance that out. Parents going to save their child."

"Who are you?" Derek asked. "I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm so grateful to you, knowing that we have a chance to save Anna. But who's she to you?" That he wasn't even questioning my information was good, didn't even care about how dangerous this idea was. He was desperate to save his daughter. That motivation could be used well against the demons.

I took a deep breath. This was it. "Alright, what I'm about to tell you is a lot to take in. Just don't panic. My name is Selriona. I am a dragon." I didn't bother to add my Flight. "Amanthe is my Dragonsworn, and my closest friend, for the past hundred or so years. I want to go rescue her, and the others."

They both blinked. Layalith looked more and more annoyed by the second, all the conversation going over her head. However, even she could tell what I'd just said, and whispered out an "_Awkward._"_  
><em>

"Ri-i-i-ight," said Anastasia. I noticed she had her hands under the table, still gripping her daggers. "Get out of our house. I don't know what mental disease you have, but - "

" - having a hard time believing a dragon would come down to your home? Let me give you some proof. I could smell Derek from downstairs when we came up. I could hear him moving about, and I could hear him drawing his bow." The male blinked. "And if you want more proof, well, want to go to the Park? It'll involve a lot of screaming people. Furthermore, I am a member of the Twilight Flight," I said, revealing that information sooner than I intended. "Our flames are special. Like _this_." I lifted a hand an opened it up, dark blue fire crackling in my open palm. The flames twisted together and formed a lump hovering in mid-air, which rapidly grew to half the size of a human head. I kept the fireball suspended for a few seconds, keeping all three mortals in a trance, its light conflicting with the lantern's and turning the table green. I put out the fireball, and then weakened my illusion ever so slightly, violet-tinted wings spreading apart behind my back and then vanishing back into my shoulder-blades.

"Is that proof enough?" I asked. "Or do I need to speak Draconic?"

Derek nodded, albeit a little slowly. "That's... enough. So, your Dragonsworn Amanthe, who babysits our daughter, was kidnapped with her to Argus. You want us to help rescue them. But, where does Layalith come into play?" Said elf perked up at the mention of her name.

"About a century ago, I set Amanthe to Orgrimmar to keep a watch."

Before I could continue, Anastasia let out a strangled gasp. "A _century_ ago? How old _is_ she?"

"She's only a hundred and sixty six years old. Give or take a few. I gave her an anti-aging spell. So anyway, while she was there she met Layalith here. She helped her out a few times. Layalith's, well, a blood elf paladin. I put an illusion on her." The atmosphere in the room dropped several degrees, as the two members of the Alliance stared down the one member of the Horde, who caught the message and returned the glares with her own Glower. I scooted a short distance away from the conflict and waited a few seconds. Just gotta wait until they'll be able to hear me, when they can pull themselves even a bit out of the staring contest.

"Anyway," I began slowly. "She's coming with me for two reasons. One, she's a paladin, and her fellow paladins have also been kidnapped to Argus. Two, she owes Amanthe."

"I am not going _anywhere _with one of those _barbarians!_" they both hissed in unison.

I placed my head into the palm of my hand. Well, all things considered, things were going pretty well. Over the years mortal opinion of dragons had improved drastically, and that they didn't so much as bat an eyelid at the mention of my Flight meant that, at least in the less long-lived races, the atrocities we'd committed in... _those_ times, were forgotten. Maybe we'd soon have to stop hiding our existence. That'd be nice._  
><em>

"They are not," I gritted out. "Barbarians. You're just two opposing sides of the same war that's been going on for decades, and quite frankly, _everyone_ else is sick and _tired_ of it, _including_ the Dragonflights. We're all on the same side here. We all want to go save the ones that have been kidnapped. If I have to act as a mediator, I _will._ But if you think for a moment that I'm going to let something as _petty _as the Horde/Alliance conflict stand between me and rescuing Amanthe, _think again._"

"It is _not_ petty," Derek growled. "They are ruthless barbarians, and show no mercy to the valiant soldiers of the Alliance."

"How very convenient," I retorted, lowering my voice. I let my throat reverberate the same way it did when I roared, making my voice echo. "That the Horde says the _same thing _about the Alliance. Stuff that kind of talk, _now._" The echoing in my voice managed to make the mortals back off. Even Layalith, who didn't understand the discussion that had gone by in Common, looked cowed.

"Well," said blood elf interjected during the tense silence. "I don't know if you've mentioned this, but how exactly are we going to _get_ to Argus in the first place?"

"Layalith raises a good point," I said. "She wants to know how we're getting to Argus." She flashed me a dirty look, and I held up one index finger, the mortal symbol for _'wait'_. "The draenei led an exodus from Argus on their interdimensional ships. My theory is that, as they did this, they left tears in the Twisting Nether. After all, nothing _that_ big could go through the Nether and not leave a lasting mark. Scars. I plan to fly us to Outland, and then use these scars as makeshift portal-anchors. We'll travel upstream, so to speak, across every world the draenei visited, until we finally reach Argus. Sound like a plan?" I turned to Layalith, and relayed the message in Orcish.

Everyone nodded. "It sounds like as good a plan as any," Layalith remarked. "We'll need rations, though. Food, drink. Spare clothes. Those sort of things." I nodded, and translated that to the humans.

"How much?" Anastasia asked. "Like, for how many days? And how much do you need to eat?"

I raised one hand. "I need to eat as much as you do, in this form. I say pack enough for... a month. The return trip will be quick; just a quick portal to Stormwind, or Dalaran, or wherever. For food, I'd prefer something compact, high calorie, easy to produce. Have anything like that?"

Derek nodded. "I keep a large store of dried soup in a safe, as emergency food. I feel this counts as an emergency."

I released a sigh of relief. "Good, good." As much as I hated to delay any longer... "Take one day to prepare yourselves. I'll be back tomorrow. Is it alright if Layalith sleeps here tonight?"

"NO!" shouted them both.

I groaned. "Fine, fine. I'll help Layalith get settled somewhere. I'll be back at noon tomorrow." I turned to Layalith. "Alright, they've agreed. We're leaving tomorrow at mid-day. Come on," I said, standing up.

"I don't need a _chaperon_, dragon."

"The dragon has a name. And if you want to risk being in the capital city of the Alliance, where your illusion may wear off by accident..."

"Fine, fine. So where am I going to sleep tonight, _mother?_" she hissed at me.

I ignored the jab. "I'll shift you into the twilight realm and you can sleep here. They won't know it. I need to go make some preparations of my own."

She sighed. "Fine, fine. I'll be able to eat here while shifted, right?"

I considered this. "Their food should exist in both realms at once, yes." I placed an arm on her plated shoulder and pulled her into the twilight realm, along with a portion of my essence.

I turned back to the humans, who blinked when Layalith vanished, and I turned transparent. "So, we have a deal then? We all go rescue Amanthe and Anna." I shifted fully back into the physical realm.

They both nodded, and then Anastasia spoke, her voice renewed, as if she'd just woken up from a good night's sleep. She had _hope. _"As much as I don't like working with a blood elf, and as much as you scare me, being a dragon... we'll do it. If there's even the slightest chance to rescue her..."

"Good. Go get things ready, I'll be taking my leave now."

"Hold on," Derek said. "What did you do with the blood elf?"

I paused. How to explain... "I made sure she's safe." I stood from the chair, pushing it back in. "Thank you for your time, I'll let you get to work." I turned my back on them and walked to their front door. When I went back outside, I blinked. I'd forgotten how relatively bright it still was outside. Titans, you'd think it was night, as dark as they kept their house.

I walked outside of the alleyway and into the streets of the Trade District. Mortals still bustled about, going about their own lives, unaware of what was going on. So many were unaware. When we returned, I'd tell the Flight. The other Flights, too. The Legion was definitely accelerating their plan, and we needed to _stop them._ But first I needed to save Amanthe. Everything else fell second to that. I _had_ to save her.

I noticed that all the mortals stopped what they were doing. Quite literally, just _froze. _A gnome and a dwarf in a shouting contest both held their mouths opened. Gold coins hovered through the air as a human and a night elf did trade. A male draenei whelp's ice cream was just beginning to splatter on the ground, rings of frozen dairy product surrounding it as the whelp held out his hand in shock, a female I presumed to be his mother turning his way.

"Hey, glad I caught you," a voice said by my side. I jumped a bit, and there she was. A gnome female stood next to me, the only thing besides me that wasn't frozen. She had white hair tied in two 'horns' above her head, and robes patterned with yellow, black and white. She held a staff in her grasp, bouncing it back and forth between her two hands. It was a bronze stick, with blue crystals embedded in the top.

When I calmed down, I remembered who it was. "Chronormu, hi." Still, I was wary. When I'd first met Chronormu, she'd been trying to keep the Infinite Flight from ruining history by - killing - Verthelion before he could become the Aspect. They actually managed to do that, but the Bronze took me back in time, along with a few others from the future, to save him. We succeeded, but the price... Amanthe's future self _died. _The Bronze dragon had helped me out with several small things since, like giving me a cure for ground-sickness that was destroyed ten thousand years ago, so I could handle a boat trip. Still, anytime she showed up, I was wary. "What brings you here?"

She frowned and looked around nervously. "Well, um, tell me if I got it right. Are you about to go rescue Amanthe from the demons?"

"Yep," I said, chuckling at the older dragon's nervousness. "You got it right. So, is this a friendly visit or is there... something important I should know? Like, say, the result of a certain trip I'm about to undergo?"

She caught on the hint, but instead of politely turning me down like she normally did when I asked for information on the future, she developed a sudden interest in Stormwind's roads. "Well, Selriona, don't get me wrong. I really, really would like to tell you. There's just, well, don't be mad."

"Why would I be mad?" Did something happen in the time she just came from?

She sighed. "Okay. One, I don't _know_ what happens. Maybe one of my future selves do, but I can't _get_ to Argus. Far too dangerous. And the higher-ups don't _want_ me to tell you." She frowned, and looked down. Her cheeks burned in what I guessed to be shame. What did she _do_ in her past? "Selriona, as much as I want to tell you, I am literally unable to. It's just... it's just so unfair!" She stamped her foot. She held her head in her hands. "Maybe you were right..." she muttered.

"Right about what?" I asked.

She shook her head hard, returning her hands to her sides, the staff in her right one. "Nothing, nothing. Just something your future self told me. Anyway, look. I can't tell you what's going to happen, as much as I want to. This isn't a time-thingy visit."

"Time-thingy?"

"I just want to give you some friendly advice. There's a Liberality Confederacy guild hall close by. Currently there aren't many in there, but there is someone I think you should bring along. Balance out Layalith's light." She looked up at me, then hastily broke eye contact. "Well, there we go. That's that. I need to go... think about things now. I'll see you later... maybe. Well, _you'll_ see me again, don't know if _I _will. Uh, bye."

"Wait!" But by then, she was already gone. The world restarted, and nobody was the wiser. Still, Chronormu's words and actions left me with something to ponder. Why was she so nervous around me? The Bronze Dragonflight is very tolerant of my Flight; being time travelers, they could see in the future we meant no harm. Probably. Most definitely. So Chronormu acting strange around me couldn't be because my Flight turned against the Wyrmrest Accord in the future; otherwise, all Bronzes would _always_ be nervous around us. So it must've been I do to her recently in her past. I couldn't think of anything I did, so it must be in the future. I decided not to worry about it.

She'd given me an obvious piece of advice. She wanted me to recruit somebody from the Kingslayers, or at least their guild. But would it be a good idea to recruit one to the mission? I mean, if the group was too big, we'd be swarmed by the demons. But then, they were very powerful. And she said their power would cancel out the demon-attracting Light that Layalith wielded. What if it was a warlock? Or a demon hunter? A death knight? Even a necromancer?

Yes, I'd go there. I began to search for them, but as I did, something occurred to me.

Amanthe's alive. She has to be. How else would she have had a future self when I was a drake?

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><p><strong>Review let me know what you think.<strong>

***spazzes out***

**I seriously can not thank all of you enough for all your support these past... fuck, seventy two chapters! All you people who read, reviewed, favorited, alerted. There's... there's just so many of you, I can't list everyone because I'd repeat, or I'd miss someone and then I'd feel so terrible, oh man. I never could have imagined getting such a warm reception for this story. The fact that this story, combined with Coup de What, has 270 reviews... oh God, these feels. I can't handle all these feels. *passes out*.**

**Honestly, I can not thank you all enough. I... can't say that enough. Really, truly. Until next time, this is coincidencless.**


	25. Chapter 25:Dead Worlds

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Massive thanks to my beta dharak!**

**Chapter published 10/24/12**

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><p><span>Selriona<span>

The guild hall of the Liberality Confederacy was located, of all places, in the Park. The gathering place of the most powerful fighting force in the world, located in the city's most peaceful location. But, a hint from the Bronze was a hint from the Bronze, and Chronormu had never led me astray before. The building was rather unassuming. It didn't stand out more than any of the other buildings in Stormwind, with windows, a purple roof, and a porch with stairs leading to a door. A sign hung on the outside, with the symbol of the Liberality Confederacy; the lion of the Alliance surrounded by the horseshoe of the Horde, underneath a crossed sword and staff. I walked up to the door unopposed; nobody was in sight at the moment, the tranquil park empty.

I couldn't hear that many people inside. Perhaps only one. But what did I expect? The information of the Bronze, when they aren't trying to purposely mislead you, is very accurate. I tried to open the door, but it failed to obey my command. I sighed. Of course, it would be locked. Breaking the lock wouldn't go over with them well. What to do, what to do. Well, there _is_ that option...

I knocked.

The door opened surprisingly quick, but it opened _out_, knocking me in the head. "Ow!" I exclaimed, stepping back and rubbing my head.

"Oh," someone said much to cheerfully for my liking. "I am so sorry."

Still rubbing my head, I got a good look at her. The night elf stood taller than my human form, but nearly so much as to make me need to crane my neck. She had hair as green as Ysera's scales, which, in atypical fashion for mortal females, was cut short so that it didn't extend beyond her ears. A black tattoo was imprinted on her forehead, filled with swirls and ripples, shaped like a bird of prey aiming its beak for her nose, its wings spreading to her long, pointed ears. A blindfold the color of the night sky wrapped around her eyes and behind her head, obscuring them from sight, save for the faint fel-green glow where her eyes should've been. She appeared to be in 'civilian' clothes at the moment, a green blouse with black pants, and, of _all_ things to wear, shiny black dress shoes.

"Hello?" she snarled at me, taking me aback with her hostility. "Is there something you need?"

I narrowed my eyes. "First off, what's the matter with you?"

Her anger deflated, and she seemed bored all of a sudden, as if I wasn't worth her notice. "Oh, yeah, you don't know." I bristled. Was she, a _mortal_, brushing me off!? "I've gone through a lot of stress earlier in life. My emotions don't line up with how I express them. I'm not bored, really. I'm embarrassed," she finished with a yawn. "Trust me."

I raised an eyebrow. "O-o-okay? Anyway, can we talk?"

"Sure," she sighed, stepping out and closing the door behind her. Before she did, though, I caught a glimpse of a horn mounted on a wall. It didn't resemble any horn from a dragon. Maybe a demon? She crossed her arms and looked at me. "So, first off, who are you? And why do you seem so familiar?"

"Hmm." I narrowed my eyes at the night elf. Now that I thought about it, she seemed rather familiar as well, stirring up memories in me. It dawned on me. "Ah, Orande!" _There's_ the memory, as bright and clear as if it happened yesterday. "I remember you now. What was it? Little more than eight decades ago, I think."

She smiled. "How exactly do we know each other?"

"Remember when you went with..." My voice fell. "Amanthe, and Aruen to Outland? To stop a corrupted mage?"

Comprehension _seemed_ to dawn on her, for just a fraction of a second, before it faded to anger. "Oh! Yes, now I remember you. You're the drake's broodmother. Seluriona, was it?"

"Selriona, actually."

Still seething, she nodded. "Right, so, what was it you wanted to talk to me about?"

"A proposition. Amanthe, along with several other priests and paladins, have been abducted." I paused, taking in a deep breath. "By the Burning Legion, to Argus. I've already enlisted the help of three others to come."

She shifted her weight to her right side, frowning. "And you want me to come along on a suicide mission to Argus. What gave you the idea to approach _me_ of all people?"

"Well," I said, wringing my hangs nervously. "To be perfectly honest, a Bronze friend of mine told me that your guild has a hall here, and that there was someone there who could help me. Guessing she meant you."

"The Bronze?" she asked, sounding happy. "What's going to happen that makes the Bronze interested in what's going on?"

"Well, according to Chronormu, they aren't. She was just on a friendly visit."

"And you believed them when they told you that - hold on." She clenched her fists, and I could imagine her glaring behind the blindfold. "Chronormu, Chromie. Nevermind, she _would. _So, what exactly are you planning?"

"Well, I'm going to bring the five of us to Outland, and then sort of backtrack across all the worlds the draenei have visited until we reach Argus. Then, we'll quickly rush in and out of Argus, rescuing them. I know some of the Legion will attack us, but none of us can be too powerful."

She nodded, but didn't seem pleased. "Good plan, they'll swarm you if you bring, say, an Aspect, or something."

"That, and I'm guessing your power will cancel out the power of the paladin I'm bringing along with us. We'll go, rescue them while fending off the demons, and get the fuck out of there before they can bring their real strength down on us."

She sighed. "Sound plan, but why would I go along with it?"

I hesitated. "Well, there'll be lots of demons to kill."

The ghost of a frown tugged at her lips. "Good enough for me. I'll just grab my weapons and we'll be off."

"Actually, we're leaving tomorrow at noon. Make sure to bring your own rations; I've got no idea how long it'll take for us to reach Argus."

"Hmm, good point. One question, though. Why don't you simply ask the draenei to portal you there?"

"Are you crazy? Not only would that be a very, _very_ sore topic, and the demons have probably changed all the anchor points on that planet, what if they succeed? That kind of power spike would land us knee-deep in demons. I don't plan to portal there. Just sort of swim upstream, which doesn't release as much of a magical signature. Stealthy, or as stealthy as we can be."

"True, true," she admitted. "Well, farewell. I shall be here tomorrow at noon. Come find me then."

"Thank you, Orande. Really, you don't know what this means to me." I clenched my fists. "If... if I let Amanthe just rot there..."

"I know. Goodbye." With that, she abruptly ended off our conversation and returned into the guild hall, slamming the door shut.

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><p>The day crawled by at an agonizing pace, yet somehow the departure arrived all too soon. It took no time at all to gather everyone up. Derek had his bow and a quiver full of arrows, as well as a bag that smelled of metal. Anastasia had her two daggers in another bag, judging from the smell, in addition to food and water. I shifted Layalith back into the physical realm, and we went to get Orande. She had changed into leather clothes patterned black and green, two poisoned, serrated warglaives on her back, with handles engraved with pictures of demons and naaru. A few explanations later, we were on our way. I shifted us into the twilight realm and, in the middle of the trade district, shifted to my true form. I laid down on my stomach and extended my wings as makeshift ramps. The humans, who had likely never <em>seen<em> a dragon before, swore. Layalith went first, clambering into a little nook between two of my crest spines, then Orande went behind her, followed by the two human mates.

"Orande," I asked her once everybody was on and relatively settled. "You _can_ speak Orcish, right?"

"Indeed I can, Selriona."

I nodded. "Good, good. I don't want to be the _only_ mediator between these three. Titans know we'll need to play translator." Then, inwardly in Draconic, "Far too many times."

With the strength of the twilight realm powering my wings, we sailed across Elwynn Forest in record time. Duskwood was passed even quicker, the eerie shadows of the trees not diminished in any way by the twilight realm. After just a few hours of flying, we arrived in the Blasted Lands. Over the years, the shadow energies released from the Dark Portal had diminished, and shifting partially into the physical realm, I saw that life was beginning to return to the area. I could see a few patches of green moss barely making a living on the dusty red stones. The various, mutated life forms were finally stabilizing into an actual ecosystem, instead of just an endless cycle of eat-everything-that's-not-me. Helboars gored the softening ground with their tusks for grubs, releasing fire novas to aid them in their efforts. Twin-headed vultures patrolled the skies in packs, circling above the bodies of fallen hyenas, whose heads were separated from their bodies by the strong bite of their kin.

Of course, the Dark Portal itself was still unstable. A storm cloud hung over it, strikes of lightning forcing me to the ground lest I get shot out of the sky. I didn't want to use my magic to shield myself; I'd need every drop of it to reach Amanthe. I shifted out into the physical realm entirely, along with my passengers, and cracked my wings.

"Ready?" I asked in Common. The humans voiced their confirmations, and Orande translated to Layalith, before both gave me the go-ahead. "Hang on," I said, charging at the Dark Portal. The stone-encased form rapidly filled my vision, the two statues on the end as still as ever. The green-ringed starry sky grew larger and larger, dominating my vision, until it was _all around_ me, and then I fell out the other end.

Hellfire Peninsula laid spread out before me, its stones the same pale maroon as that of the Blasted Lands, but without the occasional patch of moss or green slime. Instead, fire billowed up in dozens of pillars, sending acrid smoke high into the Great Dark Beyond. Colossal moons dominated the sky, along with a green, shimmering river. Hundreds of stones hung in the air, some orbiting others, others bobbing up and down in the air. The Stairs of Destiny were humongous, over twice as wide as an Aspect is long, and they led to a road that stretched farther than even my eyes could see.

"Well," I said. "We're here."

Wing beats filled the air, and a deep indigo figure landed infront of me, sending dust rushing away from him in a near-perfect circle. He bowed his head to me, his six tusks retracting into his head.

"Brood-mother," he greeted in Draconic, standing back up. He leaned his head to the side, looking at my passengers.

"Ialion," I greeted. "Anything happen here?"

He shrugged. "A couple of demonic couriers come by now and again, but they never get far." He shook his head, his neck-flap moving back and forth in opposition to his head. "So, who're the mortals? I mean, I recognize Orande, and I _think_ I know that blood elf, but..."

"You met her when you were a whelpling. In Orgrimmar, remember?" I ignored the nervous shuffling and the scent of fear coming from my passengers.

He cocked his head sideways, extending a rear tusk on one side of his head. "Hmm... maybe. It's when I talked you into letting me go with Amanthe, right?"

My face fell when he mentioned her. "Yeah, then. We're just passing through here. To Nagrand."

"Really? So, anything happening in Azeroth? I mean, you can imagine I don't get a lot of news here."

I smiled warmly at my son. "Well, from what I heard up in the Ghostlands, Charoliona's laid her eggs." He smiled at the update on his mate. "And, lets see. We're working with the other four Flights, and I think we may have found the fourth living Old God, in Stranglethorn Vale, but we're not entirely sure yet."

He nodded, grin too large for his fangs. "That's great news! So, what do you need from Nagrand?"

"Listen closely. A few days ago the Burning Legion kidnapped several priests and paladins from Stormwind, _Amanthe _among them." His slit pupils turned to narrow lines, and a breath forced its way out from behind his fangs. "They were taken to Argus, and we're going to rescue them. Nagrand has Oshu'gun, a draenic ship. I'm going to follow its trail all the way back to Argus."

A look of hard determination set on his face. "Hold on. Brood-mother, I'm coming with you."

I shook my head. "No, Ialion. You're not. If we bring too many people with us, the Legion will sense our magic, our heartbeats, you name it. They'll swarm us. And second..." I took a deep breath. "If anything happens to me, if I don't return, I need you to tell Verthelion what happened."

"But - "

"No buts. Ialion, I'm counting on you to do this. They're using them for the Light and magic amplifier that they stole when you were a drake. They've got to be, why else would they _kidnap_ them and not _kill_ them?"

He drew closer to me and nodded. "Alright, Brood-mother. How long do you think you'll be gone?"

I shrugged my wings, still speaking in Draconic. "Hard to tell. I'd say maybe a month. Maybe longer. But if I don't return in a month, assume I'm dead."

He frowned. "Alright." Sensing my son's discomfort, I reared up on my hind-legs. This caused the mortals on my back to swear and tighten their grips on my scales. Ialion also reared up and I wrapped my forelegs around him, my wings behind his back. "Be safe, mother." We withdrew from the embrace.

I lowered my underbelly to the ground, flaring my wings straight out. "Keep the portal safe, Ialion!" I shouted. Then I jumped, thrust my wings down in a powerful flap, and drew my passengers and I into the twilight realm, all with one fluid motion. I started across the now purple-tinted landscape of Hellfire Peninsula, every blazing geyser releasing massive, shadowy ripples.

"So, dragon," began Derek after an hour of travel, the mire of Zangarmarsh coming into view, green and blue spores filling the air high above the mushroom canopy in the physical realm.

"Selriona," I corrected him.

"Right, Selriona. Who was that dragon back at the portal?"

"My son," I told him. "He watches this end of the Dark Portal, while Asphyxion watches the other end."

"Why didn't we see him?" Asked his mate.

I would have shrugged my wings, but they were busy flying me across Outland. "Beats me. He was probably hunting. He seems to do that a lot, now that I think about it."

There was a brief silence as the two humans contemplated this, and Orande tiredly translated for Layalith, before Derek spoke up again. "Watching it for what?" he asked.

I cursed in Draconic, and craned my head back towards him, catching my passengers out of the corner of my eye. "Well, it's a long, long story. One that I don't feel like saying. You can ask Layalith or Orande if it interests you, they know. But let's just say they're watching out for demons, and keeping them from passing through." The sky turned turquoise as we entered Zangarmarsh. Using what I'd seen of Outland maps, and my internal compass, I angled myself slightly more to the south in order to reach Nagrand. For a while in Zangarmarsh, I could've forgotten we were on Outland. No enormous moons dominated the sky. The green beam of energy was behind me. As I continued to fly, the sun got lower and lower, and stars began to pop out in the sky. A white disk, Outland's one true moon, shone bright. I craned my neck around, looking at the stars. I wondered, which one is the sun for Argus? For Azeroth?

Mushrooms continued to pass below me, but we soon reached a mountain range. Updrafts, strong even in the twilight realm, came up below me and I spread my wings out to catch the winds. They lifted me higher and higher, over the mountains. Once there, I marveled at the scene before me.

The plains of Nagrand stretched before me in all their splendor. Even at night, they were a rich, vibrant green. Wildflowers bloomed in multicolored clumps on the ground, their scents permeating the air. Stones stuck out of the ground in awkward angles, like outposts for someone to stand on. I could just picture myself standing on one, raising my head and roaring to the sky, extending my wings. In the distance, I could see an enormous, pale white crystal sticking out of the ground, as tall as Wyrmrest Temple.

Of course, all of this was with the small portion of my essence in the physical realm. In the twilight realm, Nagrand was much less vibrant.

Just Zangarmarsh had been depressing, nothing more than a vast, empty plain with dark water-ways winding through the damp soil like a demented labyrinth. Nagrand, however, was a different story altogether.

It was nothing but brown and gray. Dirt covered the land in bumpy waves, with plateaus of gray stone replacing it in some places. The rocky protrusions were untouched, but with the dead Nagrand around it, they looked more like tombs. Oshu'gun itself was surrounded by a simply humongous cloud of black mist, void corruption, as large as Stormwind City, maybe even as big as Grim Batol. This was a place that made me feel uncomfortable, even within the twilight realm. Which was why I moved all of us into the physical realm. We were close enough. Time to begin.

I laid down on my stomach and extended my wings. "Alright, time to get off," I said in Common, then Orcish. _That's going to get annoying_, I thought to myself. Once all the mortals had disembarked I ruffled my wings, then pressed them against my back. "Here goes nothing. If all goes well, we should teleport to the world the draenei were on before Outland. " I focused on my magic, and the magical currents of Outland.

The rest of the world seemed to fade into nothingness as I focused on the mana. Outland was amazingly, even alarmingly, close to the Twisting Nether. Vast currents of magical energy swirled around the entire world, mostly inert, but every now and then one managed to make something odd happen. Like a pebble would suddenly skip itself, a blade of grass would uproot itself. One of my newer scales abruptly shed, falling onto the ground. I frowned. I'd grow a new one within hours, but still.

I searched closer to the enormous, crystalline structure in the distance I knew to be Oshu'gun, and for a moment I found nothing. But very quickly, I saw it. The chaotic winds of the Twisting Nether _curved_ at the top of the fallen Naaru ship, forming a narrow filament reaching higher into the night sky than I could see. I blinked hard, then refocused on it. I drew magic around me, arcane energy lighting up the night and crackling about my fangs. I held onto the magic while aligning it with the tear in the Twisting Nether, drawing upon that realm's own energy to fuel my spell. The arcane spell around me grew brighter and brighter as I found a destination. Then I pointed my head down, and spat the magic at the earth before my claws.

The arcane barrage smashed into the ground and exploded, catching us all in its energy. The entire world went white for a few seconds, the only sound the screaming of... I believe it was the humans.

It ended as quickly as it began. Everything the mass teleport had caught came with us; even the grass from Nagrand formed a perfect circle around us, with a radius as long as I was from horns to tail. I took a moment to catch my breath, and drew energy from my capacitor to replenish my mana pool. It left it dry, but at least I wasn't lacking any magic.

The human mates stopped screaming momentarily, then looked around. "Where are we?" Anastasia pondered dumbly, sweeping her head around.

"Good question," Layalith murmured, the words lost to her but the meaning clear.

'Where are we' indeed. We'd brought a microcosm of Outland with us, but beyond the farthest blade of grass, nothing was recognizable.

The sky, for one thing, was overcast with heavy, sulfurous yellow clouds, which rumbled ominously, as if a massive beast was waiting to spring down on us. For a second, it was _hot_. I thought I knew hot after living in Grim Batol, close to oceans of lava, but _this!_ It felt good on my cold blood, but it parched me. The only time when a wet heat is preferable to a dry heat!

The ground outside our ring of grass was made of cracked and baked white stones, which looked like they had been beaten with multiple hammers over years. Battered, dented, on top of the cracks. Clearly, all the water in them had been boiled away. The spider-web cracks reached as far as the eye could see, and the land was completely level. No matter where I looked, the same endless stretch met my eyes, overlaid with the toxic gold-colored clouds. A desert. We were in a desert. I voiced this opinion to the mortals.

"By the Light," Layalith whispered. Is _this_ what the Legion does to worlds they conquer? I hope this is just a small portion of the world, and that other parts are more lively."

"I doubt it," Orande grumbled dejectedly as I translated to Derek and Anastasia. "The Burning Legion wishes nothing more than to tear down everything the Titans have ever made. They are very, very thorough. This is the fate that should await Azeroth, should we ever fail to repel the Legion's attacks."

"What's with the clouds, though?" I asked, craning my neck up. I opened my jaws slightly and blew a narrow stream of my dark flames into the air. The fire whistled, but did nothing spectacular. "I've never seen anything like it. Think it'll rain?" I asked. "That'd be welcome. A little rain in a desert like this."

"No, no!" Orande shouted, suddenly furious. "Look, look! These clouds are so thick, and go for so long, they must be permanent. And if they were, it would rain often, and there wouldn't be such cracked stones. Look closely. Don't you see how... worn the stones look? And those clouds... it's going to rain alright. But it won't be water!"

"Then what will it rain? I mean, if it's not water, then..." I asked, eyeing the brewing storm with distaste. Then I snapped my eyes forward, seeing an approaching _wall_ of yellowish rain closing in on us, clearing ground at an alarming rate.

"_Acid!_" she shouted.

I instantly threw up my power, forming a solid barrier of shadow magic around us. The rain bounced off harmlessly, but the shield wasn't large enough to completely engulf the grass. The grass that _was_ hit by the acidic rain wilted and turned black, crumpling to the ground. The downpour was deafening, and I could hardly see two meters outside the dark barrier.

"Alright, we're getting out of here," I growled in Common. I searched for a tear in the Twisting Nether again. It was a little harder to find this time, but there it was. I reached my magic into it, and teleported us away to another dead world.

This next world was little better. I brought with us the same grass as before, along with some of the wilted, blackened strands, to yet another planet. This one was not overcast at all. In fact, it had a clear blue sky, and it was a sunny day. Too bad it was an endless plain of solid gray stone. Not cracked like the desert world had been, but devoid of life anyhow. There were a few pools of murky water that I drank from, my draconic immune system fighting off anything unhealthy that may have been in the liquid. The mortals all gathered around Anastasia as she took a few flasks of water out from her bag, while Orande drank from her own, which she appeared to produce from a secret pocket in her clothing. Once we were done refreshing ourselves, we gathered around and continued to hop across worlds. But the third jump was even harder than the second. And I had a bad feeling that as we got closer to Argus, going on would be harder and harder...

* * *

><p><span>Amanthe<span>

Alright, I'll admit it. I kept putting it off.

I told my teacher that I would tell him the truth about me the day after we arrived on Argus, but now it's been two days and I've said nothing. I avoided him any chance I got, staying close to Anna. We typically holed up in a restroom, playing casual games like rock-paper-scissors in vain attempts to take our minds off our situation.

"Rock, paper, scissors, shoot," I said, showing off paper. Anna showed rock, and when I reached out to cover it, she playfully pulled away. I ruffled her hair. "I win, Anna!"

"Again!" she stubbornly insisted. I smiled, and held out my fist again.

We bounced our fists three times and showed our decisions. I had rock, and Anna, just as I predicted, went with scissors, expecting me to show paper again. I bounced my fist on her fingers, and she pouted.

"I wanna play something else, Manthy."

I chuckled. However talented she was with the Light, she was still only six. I let her win plenty of times, sure, but I needed something to comfort my own ego at times. However petty it was.

"Sure, what else?" A gurgle filled the air, originating from both of us. "Hmm, maybe we should get something to eat first?" I asked her.

She smiled and nodded a little _too_ vigorously. "Yeah! I'm hungry! How did you know?" she asked, honestly amazed.

"I heard your stomach growling," I told her.

She looked down at the wooden floor sheepishly. "Oh," she whispered. I got up from the bathroom's floor and unlocked the door, ushering out Anna with a hand on her back.

The Legion had, so far, been true to their word. I hadn't seen a demon once since that dreadlord came to explain that they wanted to _breed_ us to be strong in the Light. And as I walked with Anna to the center room, clean, drinkable water flowing in spiral ramps along its edge, others also came inside. A few washed their hands in the moving water, while some cupped their hands and drank from it. I myself also drank, and offered some to Anna, who greedily accepted. I doubt the Legion hadn't put anything in the water, but if they had nothing had happened so far. And water _is_ water. But the real reason we came here for was what happened every day at roughly this time. As much as I loathed the term, I could think of no better words for what the event could be called.

_Feeding time._

I looked up at the hole in the ceiling, a dull ray of white light shining down, waiting. The internal clock of us 'mere mortals' was nowhere near as accurate as that of dragons, but I still counted down. "Five, four, three, two, one." Nothing happened. "One, two, three, four, five, six..."

"Manthy, why are you counting?" Anna asked, tugging at my robes. None of us had a clean change of clothes. Yay.

I didn't respond, instead holding up a hand for her to wait, and kept counting. "... eleven, twelve, thirteen..." I reached twenty-eight before a stream of solid objects fell through the hole, landing on the floor with dull bounces and rolling a little distance away. Everyone walked towards them at once. It had only been two days, yet we were so used to this procedure. I personally still waited for the Legion to provide us with something poisoned, but as of yet nothing had happened.

The items that fell were, for lack of a better description, containers. They weren't made of any solid material, instead of flickering shadow energy in a form that could fit in the palm of my hand. They were shaped like cylinders with wide tops and bottoms half as wide, making them awkward to balance. There was a pile of roughly fifty of them, two for each of us. I scooped up four for me and Anna, and guided my relative away. Instead of heading back for the restroom we'd locked ourselves in before, we returned to the room we'd unofficially claimed as ours, the same one we slept in the first 'night' we were here. We got into the bed, sitting with our backs against the wall, as I opened my containers of food by 'peeling' off the top layer of shadow magic, which flickered and vanished when I removed it. I repeated the procedure for Anna's food, and we dug in.

The food we were given was always in a few different forms. For what I supposed was breakfast, one of our containers held gray nuggets the size of my thumb with the taste of pasta, and the other was a dark brown pudding that I supposed was our caffeine, since it woke me up and tasted like a mixture between coffee and chocolate milk. For dinner, we got narrow, dark red strips that were chewy, smelled like bacon, and tasted like cardboard, in addition to a thick orange pudding whose taste was some cross between orange, mango, and banana. And for lunch, like now, we got translucent, chewy amber nuggets, shaped in the form of rounded rectangular prisms that had a strong taste of vanilla and sugar. The other container always had coarse green bearings, as if someone took an emerald and ground it to gravel. That always had the taste of spinach.

The food was, in short, surprisingly good. Much better than what I expected as the prisoner of the Burning Legion, and, as much as I hate to say it, some of it's even better than the food back home. I don't know what it's made of, but I don't really want to know. While the food is in small quantities, it fills me up, leading me to believe it's some synthesized good the Legion makes and adds flavor to. Whatever. It's food, and if it'll keep me alive longer, then fine. I'd long ago given up on escape, but I wasn't about to just lay down and die.

Since our lunch contained what amounted to vegetables, Anna grimaced as she ate the green gravel. But since it also contained the chewy, sweet food, she downed it in moments, chewing loudly despite me telling her to eat with her mouth closed. I was content to sit their quietly, sampling my food slowly over a length of time I estimated to be thirty minutes. At this point Anna was halfway through her 'vegetables' and all traces of the other shadow container, and the sweets it held, had vanished. I sat there, watching Anna pick through her food, encouraging her to eat and keep her strength up, when the door opened. I cursed in Draconic. I'd forgotten to lock it.

Jason walked in, his arms crossed. "Amanthe, as your mentor and your friend, I am telling you right now. Explain your past to me." He tapped his foot, and his face was set in an expression that clearly said Not Amused. "Start here. Who's on the other side of your mental link?"

I gulped. This was it. Anna had stopped eating her food, looking at the exchange between the adults with wide red eyes. Steeling myself for the worse, I opened my mouth. "Her name's Selriona. We go way back. When I say way back, I mean _way_ back. She's very talented in magic and gave me a spell to freeze my aging temporarily." My eyes widened. If our magic was suppressed, then did that mean I couldn't refresh the spell when it wore off after a year? Oh by the Light, I was going to get _old!_

He narrowed his eyes. "And just _how_ old are you?"

I counted on my fingers. "Um, I look thirty, but I'm actually one-hundred sixty-six. Give or take."

He choked on his next breath, coughing and sputtering. He leaned against the wall with one hand, the other around his stomach. I stood from the bed, but made no move towards him. He was fine. Finally, he looked up at me, his one blue and one brown eye wide. "_A hundred and sixty six?_ Light, Amanthe! You're older than I am. Over four times older! And what kind of a name is Selriona?"

This was it. The kicker. As much as mortal knowledge of the Dragonflights had increased, they still provoked a sense of awe and, more often than not, fear of a race so incredibly powerful. "Alright, ever heard of the Cataclysm?"

He nodded. "Yeah, happened a few years after the Fall of the Lich King. Guessing you were alive for both. The Black Aspect Neltharion made his final attempt to destroy Azeroth then, but failed."

"Yes, and one of the tools he used to try and destroy Azeroth was a new Dragonflight. By taking dragon eggs and corrupting their bodies, then brainwashing their minds, he created the Twilight Dragonflight." The inklings of an idea formed in his eyes.

"Proceed," he said.

"The Twilight Dragonflight's view of the world was twisted into thinking the good were bad and the bad were good - "

"Just like Samantha!" Anna piped up.

I looked over to her, smiling. "Yes, just like Samantha." I looked back to Jason. "I babysat her back home. That was one of the bedtime stories I told her. So anyway, the Twilights thought Neltharion was good, and us mortals were evil and corrupt. All except one, Selriona."

"So she's a _dragon?_ Oh wow. That's... something else. You could talk to a dragon with your mind. Oh my."

"Yeah, her. So anyway, she nearly died in the Cataclysm while she was a drake, but she managed to piece things together and pull through, realizing she and her entire Flight had been, well, duped. She came to Stormwind, where we first met. Eventually, being around her got us both exiled and nearly killed, after which she felt she owed me for making me an enemy of the Alliance. She brought me to where I wanted to go, the Argent Crusade. I spent some time there, but that's not important. Selriona went to go find her mate, well, her _destined_ mate at that time, who was in Hyjal. She never tells me what happened there exactly, or how she saved him, but both she and Verthelion got away from the fight, and she persuaded Verthelion that Neltharion was, in fact, evil, and we were not."

I paused to take a breath. "Eventually, they got back to the Eastern Kingdoms and went to their old home, where they stayed a few months. They had their aging accelerated, see, so they instead of being drakes for a century, it was two years. Once that time ran out, they went and found old friends of theirs and were aged into full-grown dragons. They brought those two into their little fold, as well. See by that point, the war was turning in our favor, and the Twilight Flight knew that. However much they, as a whole, wanted to beat us, the fact that they were down to fifteen hundred prompted them to scatter and hide. Verthelion's group got a few dragonspawn over into their group as well, and headed to Wyrmrest to speak with the Dragonqueen. A few things stood in their way, but eventually they reached her, and talked her into a temporary alliance; their group helps them defeat Neltharion, in exchange for their Flight not being hunted down."

"I'm guessing they succeeded in killing Neltharion," Jason mused. "We wouldn't be standing here otherwise."

I nodded. "That's correct. They, the four non-corrupt Aspects, and the Kingslayers went and killed Neltharion after a battle that she describes as having 'made her want to die'." I reached over and patted Anna's hair as she kept eating, listening intently to my story. "They had only four Flights after, so they appointed the Twilight Flight as the new one, and promoted Verthelion to be the Aspect. They made their home in Grim Batol and have been keeping tabs on corruption on the world ever since."

"Mm-hmm," he said. "And what about you?" The reserved tone in his voice led me to believe he already knew, but I told him anyway.

"I missed her, to be honest. She was my friend in Stormwind, so I left the Argent Dawn after a year and found her. I am, well, I _was, _her Dragonsworn."

"And you were in Stormwind because...?"

"Well one, nostalgia. Two, I was keeping an eye on it in case something flared up, like Faceless, or voidwalkers, or demons. And three... I had a twin brother. Key word had. He was a mage, made a big name for himself in Dalaran as the so-called 'Ice King'. Then he died, but he'd had a family." I sat back down on the bed and hugged Anna to my side. "Anna's his great-great-great granddaughter. I went to Stormwind to stay with my family."

Anna gasped, and looked up at me. "You're my aunt?" she asked.

"Well, great-great-great grand-aunt, but yes," I told her. I looked back to Jason. "Well, there you go. That's everything there is to know about me. I can use twilight fire, and shift into the twilight realm. Or I could, if the blasted Legion wasn't keeping our magic down. Not like it would make any _difference._"

Jason staggered, then sat on the bed. "This is, quite a bit to take in. I'll definitely have to sleep on this. But one more thing. How did Anna kill that succubus?"

I gulped. "Um, well, uh..."

"I like using the Light," she responded proudly. "It's fun."

Well, not like she had any childhood _left_ to preserve. "Yes, Anna's a prodigy with the Holy Light. I've seen her mold it into actual physical objects, like miniature ponies, or pouncing cats."

"And you didn't bring her to the Cathedral," Jason stated. Not asked. _Stated._ In a voice that once again gave the impression that he was Not Amused.

"I didn't want her to grow up so fast!" I protested. "She's _six_, Titans damn it!" I looked at the toddler, once again picking through her spinach-flavored green gravel. "She deserves to grow up with her parents, with no worry, not being taught to be a great big hero!" She stopped eating and flushed, closing her eyes and covering her face with her hands in embarrassment. "She'd have enough time for that later." My heart grew heavy. "Not like it makes any difference now. Everything's been taken away from us."

He nodded. "You should've turned her over to us. We could've taught her to use her gift. To fight off the demons. You've doomed us all!"

"I know that now!" I shouted. "But how was I to expect something like _this_ to happen? You can train her if you want, for all the good it will do! You'll just play into the Legion's hands, making her stronger in the Light. That's what they want, isn't it?" I spat.

He shook his head, glaring at me with harsh, accusing, two-colored eyes. "It doesn't change that fact. You've... really messed up. Who said wisdom comes with age?"

I moved over to the door. "I need to go. You can tell whoever you want about me. It doesn't make a difference now." I left, heading to the restroom. I didn't need to use it, but I needed to clear my thoughts. Just like that, my greatest secrets, which I was oath-bound to keep, were out for all to know. I felt awful. Even though they'd never know it, I betrayed the Twilight Dragonflight. And he was right. I _knew_ the Burning Legion was up to something. Properly training Anna in the use of the Holy Light could've stopped any of this from ever happening, but I didn't have her be taught because she was my family. I doomed us all.

I could hear mocking words in my mind, and they were so fitting. _It was your fault._

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<strong>_  
><em>


	26. Chapter 26:Four Towers

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**My beta dharak appears to have had his power blown out by the recent hurricane Sandy. Best of luck to you, dharak!**

**Chapter published 10/31/12. Happy Halloween everyone! *puts on dragon costume***

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><p><span>Amanthe<span>

After one week, they gave us books.

Nobody expected anything like _books._ The seven days, or at least, twenty-one meals, had passed in utter monotony. We kept eating and drinking. Anna and I kept passing the time with idle games. The soul-crushing despair and sorrow that had accompanied me on the first day had, by then, shrunken to a bit of heart-ache at the life I would never again have, with, when I thought about home, the occasional spike of misery that felt like a punch to the gut.

And they gave us books.

They were heavy things. _Tomes. _They had bright yellow bindings and a cover with the picture of, of all things, the Cathedral of Light on it, with the sky a blazing halo of Light. The title read _'The Holy Light and its Glorious Applications' _in elegant golden letters that shimmered with silver when the light hit it just so. The bindings were frayed slightly, and there were a few bumps on the hard covers, but beyond that they were in great condition. I didn't recognize the book, but all of them were the same, save for the location of their deterioration. A slightly torn page on this book, a dent on the 'o' of 'Holy' on another, so on.

I and maybe seven others were talking with each other in the central room. Anna had fallen fast asleep after dinner, but my mind was too active to fall asleep, buzzing with a hundred thousand trains of thoughts, their rails leading to nowhere. I was conversing with another priestess - Isabella, she told me her name was - about the quality of the food here compared to at home, when there was a series of _plops_ in the middle of the room, and there were the books.

It didn't take long for all twenty-four (Not counting poor Oldritch, who still suffered at the 'tender' mercy of the succubi) of us to stand around the dozen books. One for every two of us. Or one for each _couple. _Another way of the Legion forcing us together, no doubt about it. However, I'd never actually seen these tomes before. What were they about, beyond what their titles indicated?_  
><em>

Someone stepped forward, nudging the books with his foot. Carefully, as though they might turn into monsters with rings of razor sharp teeth at the slightest touch. He nudged them again, then knelt next to them. Cautiously, he opened one and read from a random page. He flipped to another page, then another, then closed the book, standing back up.

"They're spell-books," he said. "I think they have these in the Cathedral's library, they must've stolen them. They have instructions for a lot of spells in them."

"What kind of spells?" someone else asked.

"Spells about the Light. Holy fire, shackles, fear wards, power words, even resurrection. Call me crazy, but I think _they_ want us to study them."

"Then we should burn them!" Jason insisted from somewhere to my right. "If they want us to grow stronger in the Light, we should do anything in our power to oppose that!"

Murmurs of agreement swelled, and I stepped in. "Hold on, we should use them! So what it's what they want? If we get stronger, then we'll be able to fight them better when and if they restore our magical powers! " I caught Jason flashing me a withering look with his blue eye as people muttered to themselves, weighing both our arguments. I walked into the middle of the room, picking up a tome. The words on the cover had faded away, rendering its title 'The Light and its Gori' "Do what you want with the others, but I'm going to study this one, see if I can't learn anything."

I turned away from the group and headed back to my room. I closed the doors behind me and sat on the bed, being careful not to wake up Anna, who was still sleeping soundly on it, sleeping on her stomach with her head to the side, white hair haphazardly splayed over her face. I opened the book up to its first page, and when that proved empty, kept flipping until I reached the first page with spell instructions on it. The titles was displayed in elegant, bold letters.

SMITE**.**

I kept flipping, until something caught my eye. It was a chapter named 'POWER WORD: BARRIER'. I'd had so much trouble with that spell. Shields were easy enough to cast, but I simply could not manage to hold on to the energy long enough to mold its commands properly. I quickly scanned through, muttering to myself.

"A common misconception of the Power Word: Barrier technique is that it is simply a shield expanded to protect multiple people. This is not the case, so modifying a Power Word: Shield to have an area effect will not create this technique. The shell of Light is permeable, some harm will always get through. With great practice and great power, the amount that passes can be reduced by a large margin - I know that! - and even to almost zero. However, you must understand that - "

I kept reading for what must've been thirty minutes, absorbed in the book. I finished the section on the Power Word:Barrier in that time, having to backtrack multiple times to understand the complicated diagrams it offered to me on how to weave the spell's command lines. Not that I could actually practice any of it in any way, shape, or form. My magic was still being kept down. Unless...

I held the palm of my hand open and called on my magic, trying to conjure a fireball. Indigo sparks flickered around my fingertips, but nothing more happened. I dropped my hand, defeated. Damn it. Knowing the Burning Legion, we'll probably never get our magic back. I growled in aggravation, then stopped when I heard Anna stirring behind me. So much power in her little frame. She could've stopped it all. She could've been the single greatest hero the world's ever known, but I chose to be the overprotective family member, and now she'd never know what could have been. I could just imagine her twenty-five years old, standing in front of a massive army of demons, wearing gleaming armor made of condensed light, as swords, axes, bows and arrows made of the same power fought around a shield of holy energy, turning demons to ash by the hundreds.

What could have been, and it was _all. My. Fault._

I shook my head. Stop it, Amanthe. Beating yourself up won't help you any. Just need to do what you can. I looked down at my book, open to the last page of the Power Word: Barrier page, the next page showing the title of 'Spirit of Redemption'. A technique I'd heard about, couldn't do, and sincerely hoped I never had to use.

The door opened, none too gently, and the same person who'd nudged the books with his foot looked down at me. His dirty-blonde hair was in chaos, the front half of it smooth, but sticking up in a cluster of spikes near the back, with loops and spirals surrounding the hair-spikes. His eyes were a dull, steely blue, and his lip twitched when he looked at me. His nose was broad, and his chin even broader, his neutral expression bearing the look of a scowl.

"Come on out. We need to compare notes and I think you're _unique_ past talents will be of great interest for us to hear." Ah, right. Jason had told everyone I was a Dragonsworn of a formerly evil Flight of dragons. All things considered, I wasn't given too much grief about it; nobody had the heart to do so on Argus.

I stood, leaving the tome open to the Spirit of Redemption page on Anna's bed. I followed him out, back into the center of the 'wheel' that comprised our entire world. The nearly two-dozen of us stood in a circle. Several, I noted, looked quite tired. Not surprising. The lack of sleep was beginning to catch up to me as well, my eyelids drooping every now and again before I caught myself and raised them up.

The man who'd brought me walked to the middle of the ring. "Alright, you know why I called you all here. We've been at the Legion's mercy for a week, I feel it's time for us to discuss just _how_ exactly we got here. It may be a clue in helping us escape."

"Why?" a woman asked to his right, making him and several others turn their heads. "You _know_ there's no chance for us to get out of here!"

"Do you have a better idea?" he snapped. She shut up. "Thank you. I'll get started. From my perspective, I was training Oldritch and Isabella when someone, presumably a warlock, burst into our chamber with a levitation enchantment, and tossed down a tiny crystal. This crystal opened up a portal, out which came the demons that kidnapped us."

I nodded, and Jason spoke up. "The same thing happened with me." A chorus of several other 'me too's rang out. I started thinking about it. A few crystals of the size the warlocks had used, put into one space...

"They were planning this," I said. "You know that anonymous tip we got? That something was going to happen? It was from a friend of mine. He overheard the warlocks planning to attack us, and he came to me. I inspected the spot, and there was a little _cluster_ of demonic energy the size of a grapefruit. Sounds kinda like a group of these crystals, maybe?"

Jason fixed eyes with me. "Amanthe, how did you see this demonic energy?"

I shrugged. "I can shift into another plane of existence known as the Twilight Realm. I can see corruption there. Demonic corruption shows up as red, and there was a nugget of red the size of an orange."

The man who'd fetched me nodded. "We relied too much on our consecrated land. We didn't consider that a simple levitation enchantment would circumvent that, and those aren't difficult to acquire. So, now what?"

"I don't know," I mused. "We're well and truly trapped. Everybody back on Azeroth must think we're dead. How long does the energy of a demonic portal linger in the Cathedral of Light? Not long, I think. To them, it looks like a group of warlocks broke in, and both they died along with us."

"That they _disappeared_ with us," Jason suddenly corrected. He turned to the man. "Edric, we simply vanished, yes? That'll provoke suspicion. There's going to be an investigation. It may take some time for it to actually get going, but..."

'Edric' nodded, a hand on his chin. As he did, the spikes of hair bounced up and down. "I see, I see. But, what are the odds of a rescue? First, they'd need to identify that we were kidnapped, then that we're on Argus, and then they'd need to _reach_ Argus, then rescue us, then escape Argus _with_ us. Hardly what I'd call likely." He sighed. "I hoped we'd gain something useful out of this meeting, but it seems like we've just found out _how_ our doom has been cemented. We should all get some sleep. Falling over in exhaustion helps no-one."

We disbanded, most everyone heading towards their beds. I, however, was not quite ready for sleep. I went to one of the spokes, but this one didn't have a bedroom at the end. The corridor ended suddenly with a shimmering wall of green energy. It was the spot we'd been ushered into, the gate to the outside world. So close, yet so far, and did I really _want_ to be out there? Even through the emerald tinted barrier of dark magic, I saw a unit of a hundred felguards marching to the orders of a towering pit-lord, with an audience of fel-cannons their inner lights glowing through their slits like maniacal faces. None of them paid me so much as a second glance. I reached out a hand towards the barrier. Maybe it was just an illusion?

To my disappointment, as my fingers drew closer and closer, the barrier began to fizzle and froth, dissolving into bright green noise as my fingers approached. I drew back as a tendril of it began to unfurl and reach towards me. Right then. No getting out that way. I focused my eyesight and tried to see what was beyond. I could see one tower of black stone and metal reaching high above, one I hadn't seen before thanks to my state of mind. A bright, verdant radiance shone at its top, and a beam of fel energy twisted through the air to the door. It melded with it almost invisibly. No doubt the power source for the force field keeping us in. _Of course_ it was outside said force field. What else was out there?

I focused on one of the felguards practicing, its axe raised high above its head. My magic was suppressed, but if I tried a weak spell, with little mana required...

I tentatively reached my magic out, straining with the effort of even such a simple spell. My vision shifted to the felguard's, my entire range of sight being covered in a reddish orange haze not unlike fire. Its vision was focused on the pit lord before it, who raised his hands to the sky. This prompted the demon to swing its axe in a wide arc along with all the others, narrowly missing and being missed by the others. This change in position let me see my 'home' clearly.

Aqueducts ran from god-know-where to its top, where they likely supplied our drinking and bathing water. I saw other towers in the distance, beams of fel-magic falling upon the cylindrical building, covering it in a wicked glow. If I counted correctly, there were three other towers, four in total. Then I drew out of the felguard's sight and fell on my back, gasping. My entire mana pool was depleted and I was _so thirsty. _I got back to my feet and returned to the middle of the room. I drank deep from the running water, which vanished into a hole in the floor so that we wouldn't flood. I drank until I couldn't feel my throat, then went to my bedroom. Anna slept on the right side of the bed this time, so I slept on the left. Exhaustion smashed into me like a brick, and I was out like a light.

* * *

><p><span>Selriona<span>

The world faded back into corporeality, and I fell to my forelegs in exhaustion. I took several gasping, panting breaths before drawing strength from the twilight realm to steady myself. I shook my head. "Alright," I wheezed. "We should sleep for the night. Is it night? I can't tell."

The world we arrived on was dead, like all others. It was what looked to be a salt desert, the white grains stretching far into the distance where a couple of mountain ranges stood vigilant against the dark blue sky. They were tinted red by the setting sun, a behemoth ruby of a sun that took up much of the horizon. It was also close to setting, little more than a sliver of it visible. As I watched, it neither rose nor set. Frozen in eternal dusk/dawn, in perpetual twilight.

I was also exhausted. I'd been hopping my group and I through the Twisting Nether for a week, and each world was harder and harder to reach. At first, I'd been jumping every minute. Then every five minutes. Then every half an hour, an hour. At this point, my internal clock it told me I rested for a dozen hours before arriving at this world where day and night never changed. I was slowing down.

"Good idea," said Derek. "I think it's close enough to night. Who's gonna take watch?"

"Well," I said after swallowing. "I've got to sleep for nearly a day. You can divide up that."

The human male nodded. "Right. I'll take first watch. Anasty," he said, turning to his mate. "You can take second. Orande, third." He frowned, giving Layalith a nasty look that she returned in kind. "And tell the blood elf she'll take fourth watch, and to wake me up after hers."

I snorted out of my nostrils. "Sounds like a plan. Good night, make sure not to let anything kill us." I laid down on my stomach, my head resting on the salty earth. My wings formed a cocoon around my back and my tail curled under them. "That would be depressing," I murmured, closing my eyes. I raised my head and yawned wide, then sank back down. Legs folded under my body. I fell asleep in moments, darkness falling.

A moment later, I groggily opened my eyes. The mammoth red sun was still in the same spot on the horizon, low enough to not blind me but still bright enough to make me groan. I got to my paws and swung my tail in a slow arc behind me. I stretched my wings from where they rested against my back, extending them to their fullest extent and groaning. I unsheathed and retracted my tusks several times before flapping my wings. I checked each one. A cluster of three wing talons on each, as opposed to the single wing talon dragons of other Flights wield. Good. It was a stupid fear, but I always worried that someone might take them off in my sleep. Which is insane, because I'd _feel_ that, wake up, and _eat them._

"Well, good thing you're awake," I heard someone say. I snapped my head around to them, dark flame dripping from between my fangs. I relaxed when I saw that it was just Layalith, who was scrambling back from me.

"Sorry, you scared me is all." I tilted my head side to side, relieving a little ache. "How're the others?"

"Behind you, sleeping. Should we wake them up?"

I looked over and saw that, indeed, the other three mortals were sleeping. Anastasia and Derek both laid on the ground, leaning into each other. Next to them, Orande slept, apparently, standing up. Her arms hung limply by her side, her warglaives were strapped to her back, and her head was down. Their gentle breathing echoed in my ear-plates. I sighed. We had to get going. Enough time had been wasted sleeping. We _have_ to reach them. However slow the progress is, we had to keep going.

I looked around. The landscape hadn't changed any. Same salt desert, same feeble mountains in the distance. Same twilight sky speckled with foreign constellations, with a red giant of a sun that will never quite set.

"Layalith," I said, looking over to her. "You might want to take a step back." I turned back to the sleeping mortals, hearing Layalith scramble back. I took a deep breath, filling up my lungs with the stale air. I opened my jaws as wide as they could go and roared full force.

The reaction was instantaneous. Orande was up first, her snoring stopping with a snort and a blast of shadow magic coming at me. Anastasia was the second one up, drawing out her daggers from the _decidedly _unsafe position of being next to her while she slept, and leaping up into a stance with them pointed at me. Derek was the last up, reaching for a bow and a quiver that was a few body lengths away from him. Orande's spell hit me in the face, making me blink my eyes as it harmlessly splashed off my scales.

"I'm up," I said. "It's time to go on."

The human female glared at me. "Selriona, you could've done something beyond _roaring_ at us!"

I shrugged my wings. "Fastest way. Anyhow, gather your stuff and get close to me."

She rolled her eyes. "Yeah yeah, I know the drill."

I shifted my body until I was sitting on my hindquarters, forelegs supporting my body. Layalith, Orande, Derek and Anastasia came underneath me, Orande wisely between the members of the Alliance and the Horde, casting what I _assumed_ were wary glances at them, but with a blindfold it was nearly impossible to tell.

I took a deep breath, readying my magic. This wasn't an easy thing to do anymore. I wasn't looking forward to it. I didn't _want_ to do it. But I had to, for if I didn't we'd_ never_ get to Argus.

I searched for the faint line of magic that lead towards Argus, the track that had been growing fainter and fainter as we got closer. It took me a while to find, but when I did I teleported us along it.

It was like flying against a hurricane. The Twisting Nether's arcane energies washed around us like a river, the radius of the teleportation spell like a shield around us as we flew on. An immense force strained against me, pushing me backwards. I struggled, forcing my magic against this headwind, urging us to speed up. We began gaining ground, growing closer to the next world that the Legion had conquered while chasing the draenei across the Great Dark Beyond.

My magic slipped, a slight lapse in my concentration making the aura of magic pushing back against us send me spiraling back. I redoubled my effort and _pushed, _moving two steps forward and one step back each time. Finally, _finally_, I reached a sort of 'knot' in the trail, where the Naaru ship must've landed at one point. And then we were pushed away _again. _By the time I got back there, I was at the end of my tether. I didn't know what this world would be like. I never did; for all I knew we could fall into a pit of lava, or into the bottom of an ocean (Not likely), or buried under a landslide. But those were risks we had to take, so I pulled us out of the Twisting Nether and onto this new world.

I collapsed, panting heavily as the magical effort suddenly caught up to me. My head throbbed, the world spun, and both my stomach and crop tried to regurgitate. After a few moments I got myself under control and looked around.

I gulped. "Well, that's... different."

The landscape screamed 'Outland'. There was no single piece of land, instead thousands of islands scattered in all directions. To our left and right, forward and back, above and below us. There was almost no gravity, so every part of my body was so light, and the slightest movement from me was amplified tenfold. The others, I could see, were dealing with the same issues, flailing around helplessly as they tried to adjust.

The islands themselves were a steely blue, covered in black 'scratches', as if I'd dipped my claws in ink and ran them along the stones. They were lit up by some unidentified source of light. I didn't have a _shadow_ either. The vast plain of rocks, all with the same color scheme, all around us, made me feel like I was underwater, and I couldn't tell which way was up. I didn't like that feeling; dragons can't go long underwater. We won't survive even a minute there, and I struggled to suppress the rising panic in me. The islands were in all shapes and sizes. Some were little larger than a goblin, others the size of the World Tree. Some were lumpy and round-ish, with any given surface functioning as a floor, others had a clear-cut 'up', with giant caves burrowing into their cores.

"Where are we?" Layalith asked. "What happened here?"

"I don't know," I said between gulps of air. "Looks like Draenor's not the only world that exploded. Damn."

"Look at the sky," Orande said nervously after translating for the humans. "It's... covered in the arcane."

She was right. The sky was a deep purple, even darker than the scales of my Flight. Fingers of arcane lightning danced along background, and in between the islands, striking from one to another and leaving small black spots that _decayed_ back into normal coloration within moments. My ear-plates tingled. We were being watched, I could feel it. But when I looked around, nothing presented itself. Probably just my nerves from being surrounded like this.

"Well," I said after a few minutes of tense silence, howling winds tearing through the shattered planet. "We should probably get to cover. Being out in the open like this _can't_ be healthy." I looked around, before spotting an island above us. It appeared to have a flat top, with a bottom shaped like an upside down mountain. Kind of like Dalaran. In the bottom of it a massive hole opened up, leading inside. A cave. Good enough a spot to rest as any. I motioned towards it with a wing. "Up there. I'm in no fit state to fly anyone, though..."

Anastasia shrugged. "That's easy to solve." She crouched and then leaped into the air, sailing higher than I'd seen anybody jump before. She grabbed a floating rock half her sized. Whatever shattered this world must've anchored the individual rocks in place, because it stopped her. She looked down at us. "See you at the cave!" She jumped off again, ascending closer to the cave.

Her mate was the first to talk. "Huh. Look at that." As one, we jumped up. Naturally, I jumped the highest, but being the largest I was also obstructed most by the rocks. It took some effort for my magically taxed body, but I shifted to my mortal form to make it easier to get to the cave. My mana pool grew as I entered human form, but the amount I actually _had_ didn't increase. The island holding the cavern seemed to grow as I approached it, until when I sailed in the hole the ceiling was taller than some of the ceilings in Grim Batol. Which is to say, very tall.

The cave was the same dark blue and black as all the other stones. It was wavy and ridged, as if something had burrowed through the earth to carve out this passage. It curved almost straight up further in the back, and a dull light shone down from where it presumably breached the surface. Once I reached it, I fell over, falling in slow motion, and came to a rest on the stone ground.

"Alright," I said. "I'm just gonna... rest."

Orande, arriving in the cave, looked down at me and nodded. "You do that. We'll keep watch while you recover. Need anything to eat? Drink?"

"Yeah. Something would be nice. Especially water, I need to regain my mana if we're to be moving anywhere soon."

"Can't you just draw from the Twisting Nether? Whatever broke this world, it's brought us very close to it."

I shook my head, pushing my back up with my elbows. "Drawing from the Nether requires power in and of itself. If I had enough mana to draw from it, I'd be fine in minutes. But as it stands, I don't have nearly enough."

Anastasia butted into our conversation. "Alright, let me get something for you." She slung her pack off her shoulders, which had become considerably lighter during our travels, and ruffled through it momentarily, before holding to me a flask of water and a golden apple."

I grasped the water in my hands and drained it, handing it back to her. I bit into the apple. It was a little battered, and cold from the mechanism inside her bag that kept it chilled. I bit into it, greedily drinking the water from its flesh. She frowned. "We're going to run out of water if you need to drink that much after _every_ teleport." She turned to her mate. "Derek, think you can find some water in this cave? It seems pretty big, there must be some offshoot."

He took the tan leather flask from her. "Sure thing. Just try not to move around from here. Don't want to get lost." They kissed each other briefly. "Be right back." With that, the hunter was gone into the cave, his footfalls growing fainter and fainter as he left. At around the same time, Layalith hauled herself into the cave, struggling to clamber up in her heavy plate armor despite the low gravity. She and the remaining human locked eyes once she was up, glaring at each other. However, neither of them said anything. Instead, the paladin simply walked over to the far edge of the cavern's width and sat down, watching us, or more precisely the human female, like a hawk.

"Honestly," I muttered to myself in Draconic. "It's like mediating whelplings. The moment you turn away, everything falls apart." Not the best analogy, since whelplings rarely tried to _actually _kill each other. The Horde and the Alliance, however, was another matter. Anastasia, despite what rogue training she had, was still a civilian. Layalith was a fully trained paladin of the Sin'dorei. I wasn't looking forward to mopping human remains off the cave walls. I leaned back and rested against the cavernous walls, wondering. Maybe Nalestrasza could set up a shared dream with Amanthe, now that we were closer. But, how much closer? How much longer did we have to go before reaching our goal? And just _how_ would we even save them once we got there? Sure, I had the basic outline of a plan in my mind, but we need specifics. And what about the force that pushed against me, stronger and stronger as I closed in on Argus? No doubt it radiated from the demonic world, but how strong would it get on the last jump? Would I make it at all, or would we simply be unable to pass one world, and be forced to return? And our rations? Would we get there before running out of food? I'd thought one month was generous, but now I began to doubt that.

I wasn't sure how long it was before Derek returned, looking flustered, running and tripping, half gliding down. "Problem!" he shouted, tossing the flask of water onto the ground where it bounced a few times. "We've got a problem!"

Everyone's head snapped towards him. "What kind of problem?" I demanded.

"Nether beasts. Stumbled - literally - into their nesting ground after I got water. They are _very_ territorial."

I forced myself into my true form and got onto my paws. "Let's see how tough they are. Maybe they can provide us with some food, too." I heard something coming from the tunnel. Slithering, shattering, crackling, shrieking. Then the first of the nether beasts came down the tunnel.

They were eels half the size of a drake. They had glowing, pink eyes, a mouth full of razor sharp fangs and a green tongue, as well as multiple rose-colored frills running down their backs. Their scales were a steel gray, but had a light red underbelly. They wriggled as they moved, swimming through the air, arcane lightning bolts crackling along their scales. Orande had her warglaives out in a moment, and I spat a twilight fireball at it. It struck the creature in the head, making it give out a static-overlaid screech. It reared straight up, looking towards the ceiling, and disintegrated, scales and fangs dissolving and condensing until all that was left of it was a small pink orb that fell to the ground and rolled towards the edge of the cavern, falling into the void.

All the mortals had their weapons out as more of the creatures came down, their chatters echoing in the cavern sounding like unhinged laughter. There was a _lot_ of them, filling the tunnel with the sharp scent of ozone. The forward row of them opened their mouths and fired a volley of arcane lightning bolts at us. The mortals dodged them, and while I did move, I was too big a target. One of the bolts caught me on my left foreleg, searing deep, the energy burrowing under my scales and numbing the flesh. I hissed in pain and brought fires into my crop, air into my lungs. Searing orange flame engulfed Orande's weapons, Layalith's armor gave off a slight yellow glow, Derek aimed his bow and Anastasia readied her daggers.

I breathed a fireball out, and while it was still in my mouth, blew the air in my lungs onto it. The result was a wide stream of bright purple fire that scorched the entire cavern. Dying shrieks filled the air, and when I let up on the fire, all that was left of the nether beasts were a few dozen pink orbs. We waited a few moments to be sure in our victory. Suddenly, to our horror, the orbs floated into the air and were engulfed in lightning. The energy crackled for a few moments, until out of the static fields came even more of the creatures.

I groaned. That's just great.

Orande dove into the thick of the battle at the same time Derek loosed an arrow, hitting an eel between the eyes and turning it into an orb. She carved her warglaives in wide arcs, the flames on them driving the eels back from her, if the weapons themselves didn't kill them. Layalith dove into the fray, swinging her giant, light-enchanted sword at the nether creatures, slicing them in half, their fangs and magic doing little against her plate armor. As for Anastasia, she used her daggers to strike with deadly precision at them, picking off the ones sneaking up on others as Derek shot the ones approaching her. I blasted them with my fireballs, since using a stream of fire would likely incinerate somebody. And I couldn't use my magic either; I needed to save that to teleport us _away_ from this shattered world. But with them always coming back, we'd barely hold out a minute...

They unleashed another volley of arcane lightning. Orande grunted as she deflected one on her curved weapons, the metal still conducting it into her. Layalith shouted, radiant golden bolts exploding out of her in a ring and striking the eels. Many of the bolts struck me, making me seize up. I roared, but it turned into a strangled mewl in my throat.

"Take cover!" I shouted, before taking a deep breath. They got the hint and made sure they were out of my line of fire. I incinerated them all, but by the time my fires ended, the ones the mortals had killed already summoned more.

Anastasia sliced off the head of another flying eel. "They're endless! We've got to get out of here!"

The twilight realm. The twilight realm could offer safety. And more importantly, _mana._ How had I not thought of that before?

I tried to sink my essence into the twilight realm, but something was wrong. The portion of me in there was being _blown_ away by intense nether winds, and they shifted back into the physical. Realm.

"Titans damn it!" I cursed, blasting another nether beast with my flames. "Can't enter the twilight realm. The Twisting Nether's too strong here. Some sort of interference." If I wasn't fighting for my life, I'd have been fascinated. Exposure to the Twisting Nether made it harder to move between realms. But as it stood, I _was_ fighting for my life. We could try our luck fleeing through the sea of stones, but we weren't used to the gravity. The nether beasts, on the other claw...

That left only one option. It was a long shot, but our only chance.

Orande seemed to read my mind. "Get close to Selriona! _NOW!_" she shouted, before transforming. Her skin turned black, and enormous bat wings burst from her back. The tattoo on her forehead shone with an eerie verdant light, and her eyes were a pair of glowing emeralds behind her blindfold. I curled up, draining what little energy my capacitor had dry. Pitiful arcs of magic leaped across my fangs. Not enough. It wasn't nearly enough. And where was the escape route? I couldn't find it in this chaotic environment! Like searching for a hay in a needle stack.

Orande, now fully demonic in her appearance, with goat horns sprouting behind her ears, floated into the air. A wave of fire exploded out from her and washed over the nether eels, burning away their physical forms. But like always, from their ashes came a lightning field, and another one. The others, using her diversion, got close to me, each one touching a scale. It was easier to teleport if there was physical contact.

"I need... help..." I got out from between gritted fangs. Every muscle in my body strained to summon the magic from within me. I felt my throat drying out.

With the threat of the arcane eels temporarily beaten, Orande gripped Layalith's plated hand with her own hand. I noticed her nails had turned into claws as long as her forearm. Layalith gasped and knelt down as something blue traveled up her hand into the demon hunter. That same blue glow then emerged from her other hand and surged into me. Energy flooded through my body. Not enough, not nearly enough, but I could work with it. I drew some of the Twisting Nether's power into me. My mana pool was far too low. It'd be a miracle if I could pull this off. If only I just had a little more time...

The arrival of more nether beasts, seemingly double what we had before, meant there was no more time. This world would be the end of us if we didn't leave.

_I am not dying less than two hundred years old!_ I shouted to myself. I kept searching for the path out of here as Orande and Layalith's mana kept flowing into me. There! A narrow thread, tossed and turned by the violence of the Twisting Nether around it. Little thicker than a spider web, but all I needed. I readied myself, a bolt of arcane magic striking my horns and making me grunt.

I roared, and bright purple magic flooded the air. The world turned into a seething torrent of primal energy all around me. All my mana was gone in moments, fighting against the push of Argus's winds. My lungs wilted inside of me, twilight fire seeped into my crop and out of my mouth. I felt like I wasn't going anywhere. I looked up along the thread of disturbance we traveled along. The next knot was actually quite close. It probably had the same sun as the shattered planet. But getting there!

When I felt like I was going to give out and die, it finally ended. We phased back into the physical world, hopefully a _safe_ one and I just gave up. I collapsed on my side, wings and tail limp. My breathing came in shallow pants. I tried to keep my eyes open, but the lids felt like they weighed a ton each. I quickly gave up sleep, and let myself pass into unconsciousness.

Before I passed out, though, I heard Derek, his voice shaken and quiet. "Alright, we're safe here..."

Then no more.

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<strong>


	27. Chapter 27:Renewed Hope

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Massive thanks to my beta dharak, who has recently recovered from the record-breaking hurricane Sandy.**

**Chapter published 11/11/12**

* * *

><p><span>Amanthe<span>

I woke up the next morning feeling oddly warm. I'd had a dream about home, where everything was right, and I could just live free of worry each day without worrying that the Burning Legion would decide we outstayed our welcome. That I could see my family, and my dragon friends, and everything was just _right. _But all too soon, it had ended. I opened my eyes and saw the fine texture of white robes in front of me, making me go cross eyed. It took me a minute to understand my situation, the two sources of breath coming from both behind me and in front of me. When I _did_ finally understand, I blushed furiously.

I worked slowly and carefully, moving as steadily as I could. I kept my breathing even, and every noise was magnified ten-fold. Slowly, though, I managed to wriggle my way out of Jason's arms, sit up on the bed, scoot towards the end, and then I walked away.

How had that happened? Sure, Jason and I slept in the same room, along with Anna, but this was a first. And if I remember correctly, he wasn't even in the room when I fell asleep. So it had to have been a subconscious movement after he fell asleep. It felt nice, but of course it did! That was only natural after being in _this_ sort of situation.

I shook my head, clearing the thoughts. _Not the time!_ I was hungry, I wanted food. I walked out of the room, being careful not to slam the door, and headed to the middle. Sure enough, there were six shadowy containers resting on the ground. Half of them contained small gray nuggets, and the other half was filled to the brim with a brown, pudding-like substance. I scooped them up in my hand and returned to my room. Once there, I set four of them to the side and sat down on Anna's side of the bed (Since it would still be far too awkward sitting next to Jason). I 'opened' the container with the gray food first, and popped one of the orbs into my mouth. The flavor of spaghetti filled my mouth, and the food itself was chewy. While still eating it, I opened up the spellbook and flipped over to a random page.

'Resurrection', the title said. I shrugged. Okay, why not? I finished up eating that container, and the moment I did the shadow energy shimmered and dissolved. I took out the second one, opened it, and dipped in an index finger. When I pulled it out it was covered in the brown sludge, and I raised to my mouth, licking it off. It tasted good, like coffee mixed in with chocolate milk, and none of it clung to my finger when I pulled it out. I continued to eat it with one hand, the other flipping through the book.

"Resurrection is possibly the most difficult spell to successfully cast, and so ironically, it is one of the most useful. Just as things at rest tend to stay at rest, things that are dead tend to stay dead," I read aloud, eating some more of the brown food. "However, there are parameters that make things easier to revive. Something perishing in a body that was not it's own is one such circumstance. Another would be dying on a holy sight, where the energies are easier to channel. However, to bring back life, life is needed to be expended. This is not proportional, as the magic amplifies the life essence of the sacrificed flesh. To revive a fallen human, or night elf, or such, one needs only to sacrifice as much life force as in a little finger, and it does not have to be concentrated in one spot. To revive something like, say, a dragon, the life force of a small dog, or large rodent, is required. This sacrifice is actually not needed to bring them _back_. It is, however, needed to keep their souls on the physical plane, without which they will return to death within one day."

I nodded, licking off more caffeinated pudding. There was still half of the container left. "Hmm, interesting. Never knew that." I kept reading, memorizing the mechanisms on how to resurrect, while at the same time finishing my meal. Soon, none of the brown sweets remained, and the solidified dark magic vanished into nothing. A few moments later, I felt my soul _lighten._ Anna and Jason both sighed in their sleep, and I rolled my shoulders. By the Light, that felt _good._ What was that?

I got an idea. I called up my magic, called to the Light. Amber sparks danced along my arms, and a shield of Holy Light opened around me. I restrained the urge to cheer and whoop. They'd given us back our magic! Finally! I'd missed it, missed the ability to levitate, the safety net of being able to heal any injuries, the power to melt faces, and safety of _sinking into the twilight realm. _I suddenly realized they didn't know about my twilight powers, at least they probably didn't. I had something on them. But the more I thought about it, the less beneficial the twilight realm appeared to be. Sure, I could pull myself and maybe others into safety, but how much safety would we find there? Something exploding in the physical realm, like a piece of TNT or a cannonball slamming into the ground, would affect both realms equally. Even if I managed to escape and sink into the twilight realm, the Legion could simply blanket the area I was in with the hundreds of fel-cannons _right outside _the entrance.

What if I sneak outside? No good, either. There were always spells that would hit you no matter what plane of existence you're on. The Aspects, for instance, have ample power to do so. Spells that create explosions of concussive force, as well. I'd bet my left arm the Legion had multiple mechanisms in place to cause all sorts of unpleasant things to me, shifted into twilight or not. But still, I had my magic back. That opened up all sorts of possibilities. And more importantly, _Anna_ had her magic back.

I decided I was thirsty and once again left, heading to the center of the room. I cupped some water into my hands and drank it, when I heard someone's shriek. "Someone help!"

I whirled around, water dribbling from my lips, and was about to sprint towards the sound when two things fell out of the top of the room. They were two breakfast containers. I scooped them up, thinking they might be important, and hurried towards the shout. I found the corridor it emerged from and sprinted. Already, I saw a figure low to the ground there. I wove a barrier of Light on myself, nearly doubling my run speed for a few precious seconds, letting me close in on the figure. Now that I was closer, I saw that it was in fact two people. A woman huddled over a man, golden light spilling from the former and into the latter.

"What happened?" I asked, throwing the containers to the side and casting a renew on the figure. I knelt, and got a good look at them.

He was a total mess, dressed in ragged, torn cloth that looked like it might fall apart at any moment. Scars and cuts covered his body everywhere I looked, slowly oozing blood. Of course, as our healing magic worked its effect more and more of the cuts turned to scars. He was thin, his ribs showing through his skin, and his closed eyes sunken into his head. The man's hair was a black crow's nest, with a single thick streak of white through it, and his breaths came in shallow, rasping gasps.

"What happened?" I asked the other woman, who I recognized as being Emily.

"He, he just showed up!" I looked up towards the end of the hallway. There was the green barrier, as strong as ever. Comprehension dawned on me.

"Oldritch," I breathed. "The Legion's done with him, for now at least." Would I be next? "Titans, what did they _do_ to him?"

She shook her head. "I don't want to know. Oh, brother..." she said, trailing off.

My throat clenched. Her _brother?_ "Well," I said nervously, scratching the back of my head. "Let's get him into a bed. I bet he'll be traumatized when he wakes up, and being comfortable will help him. I'll bring this food, too. He must be starving."

She got her hands under Oldritch and lifted, while I scooped up the two containers of food. Emilyled me towards a room, not the one I slept in, and opened the door with one foot. Along the way we passed some other people, who stared as we walked through with the unconscious, tortured Oldritch. Soon, though, we placed him on a bed and pulled the covers up to his chin. I placed the food on his lap and turned to the woman.

"Are you going to be okay? With taking care of him, I mean." I asked the brunette.

She nodded, kneeling next to he bed side. "Yeah, yeah. I used to take care of soldiers in the war with the Horde. I can... yeah." She turned worried brown eyes back to the cut and - now that I looked closer - bruised man. "Oh, brother, what have you gone through?"

I gnawed my lip. "This is my fault... the Legion wanted _me._ If I'd gone in his place, then he'd be fine right now."

She shook her head. "And then you'd be on death's door, bleeding and hurt. Nobody can be stalwart against such torment." Despite her reassurances I could hear a bitter note in her voice directed at me. "Can you... go get Edric? I'm gonna need his help."

I nodded. "Sure thing." I walked out of the room and searched for Edric. The senior priest was easy to find with the strange spikes of hair that seemed to always inhabit his head. It was even easier to get him to go help Oldritch, as all it took was one mention of his name to make him rush over there, cursing under his breath. All in all, I felt pretty useless. It was because of my that he was even in such a situation in the first place. I should have at least be doing something to help him, something _more_ than what I already did. But they didn't want me in the room, they needed space. They were right, they did need space to treat someone, so I left.

I bit my lip and returned to 'my' room, closing the door behind me. Jason and Anna were up, eating out of their containers. Anna was just finishing up her brown pudding greedily, while Jason picked at his pasta nuggets. He looked up when I entered, making me flush slightly. If he noticed, he gave no indication.

"What happened while we were asleep?" he asked with a hint of worry. It was possible he felt light, and had yet to pinpoint the reason as our magic being returned. Something occurred to me. If our magic was back, I could keep my anti-aging spell active. Thank the Light!

"Oldritch is back. He's with his sister and Edric, they're taking care of him. Oh, and the demons decided to give us back access to our magic." I couldn't keep the grin off my face, and my eyes met Anna's. A plan sparked in my mind. Just the beginnings of one, but a plan nonetheless.

Apparently my smile was contagious, because Jason's mouth curved into one. "Our magic is back... _Anna's_ magic is back."

So he shared my own idea. "Jason, before you say anything more, let me do something." I looked at Anna and knelt to her level. "Don't be afraid, we're not leaving. We're just going to be, um, invisible, okay?"

"Oooh, can I be invisible too?" Anna asked me with bright eyes.

"Maybe later," I said, before clasping Jason's forearm with a hand. Twilight fire, cold and slimy, raced along my skin and onto his. With a slight tug of effort, both of us sunk into the twilight realm. Anna vanished, and the green glowing of the crystals embedded in the walls turned murky brown as purple mist washed over them. Jason was startled, wrenching his arm away from me and looking around fearfully, as if expecting the shadows flowing on the ground to reach up and strangle him.

"What the - "

"We're in the twilight realm, Jason. Twilight dragons are infinitely stronger in here, _and_ it also provides us a lot of safety from the physical realm. If you're not a twilight dragon, you can only be taught how to enter. You can't just figure it out. The Burning Legion is never going to willingly enter here, mark my words. At must they'll be pulled in so that they can be killed easily."

"Alright, but why did you pull me here?"

"Jason, we have our magic back. More importantly, Anna has her magic back. I know you're thinking of a plan, so am I. But we can't let the Legion overhear us. That's why we're here. To scheme with impunity."

A wicked grin crawled over his face. "Alright, so. To get back home, we'll need to get out of here first."

"Why?" I asked. "We could just open a portal, couldn't we?"

He shook his head. "I already tried, before you came in. That's the only magic that we didn't get back, portals. The Burning Legion isn't stupid. We'll need to leave, so in order to do that we'll need to find a way around that green barrier. Or we could just tunnel out."

I shook my head. "Won't work. There's four towers outside, each of them channeling a barrier onto this place, and it's not just at that door. The entire thing is covered in that fel barrier. So we have to break that shield keeping us in. We can't just sabotage the generators, since they're _outside._"

"But if we overload the barrier from within, that _might_ just give us a few seconds to escape."

"But how? We'd need a lot of energy to - " I stopped myself. "Alright, but how are we going to get Anna to break it open? Everything she knows about the Light was self-taught."

"We'll find someone to train her in the ways of the Light. She can overload the barrier, and we'll escape. But then what?" he asked, seemingly angry at the world for making our escape difficult.

"I can pull us into the twilight realm there. It won't make us completely safe, though. The cannonballs, when they hit the ground, can still hurt us inside the twilight realm. And I don't know if you noticed, but there are a _lot_ of cannons just outside." My body began to tingle. We were actually doing this. We were actually coming up with an _escape_ plan!

"But... alright. Is that barrier still there in the twilight realm?"

"It should be. Why don't we go check right now?" I asked, unsure of where he was going with this train of thought. We walked over to the exit, and sure enough, the fel barrier was still there, its emerald glow cutting through the gloom of the twilight realm.

"Good, good," he said, rubbing his hands together. "This is perfect. We can bring Anna in here and have her blow it up in this realm. Then we go through and run _towards _the cannons, get behind them where they won't expect us to go. From there we can surely find some place to open a portal back." He looked positively energized, his eyes wide as he bounced on the balls of his feet as if he might explode any second.

"Okay, that's all well and good," I told him. "But how are we going to open a portal anyway? Does anybody know how?"

He shook his head. "I don't think so, but we can figure it out if we put our magic together, surely! We'll go in a direction they'll never expect, thereby avoiding any retaliation! There's got to be some relatively safe spot on this world, and from there..." His eyes grew dreamy and unfocused, voice dropping to a whisper. "We can go home." Those words, coming out of his own mouth, seemed to re-excite him. I'd _never_ seen him this happy. It was rather unbecoming of him. "We're going to go home!" He threw himself forward and wrapped his arms around me, crushing me in a hug. I winced in pain as his sharp elbows dug slightly into me, but more than that I positively blushed.

"Um, Jason, you can let go?" I half asked, half stated.

"Oh, right," he said, sounding quite embarrassed, pulling away. "Sure. So, let's go back to the physical realm. Oh, this is great news. The Legion won't suspect a thing. I'll train Anna in the twilight realm, so that the Legion doesn't know what we're planning."

"Wait, you'll train her?" I asked.

Suddenly his eyes hardened and his good mood vaporized. "Yes, me. I don't trust you to, not since you kept her away from us all her life. Now, bring me back to the physical realm so I can get started. Or, bring Anna into here, and you can go around and tell everyone else of our plan. Make sure you're in the twilight realm when you tell them."

I wanted to protest, to say that _I_ should train Anna, since I'm her relative. But his glare tongue-tied me. "Sure. One minute." I pulled myself back into the physical realm and went back to our room.

The little girl brightened up when she saw me. "Manthy! You're not invisible anymore!"

I smiled. "Yeah, I'm not. Hey Anna, how'd you like to learn how to use the Light better?"

She beamed at me, and I felt my heart melt a little. "Yes!"

I chuckled. "Alright, hold still." She froze up, smiling widely and suppressing a smile. I stuck out my hand and she grasped it as hard as she could. Twilight fire crawled across both of us, and with a _pop_ we were in the twilight realm, yet again. Anna looked around, her jaw hitting the floor, ooh-ing and aah-ing. Jason was right there, leaning against a wall, and nodded.

"Alright, good. Leave Anna with me, and, please bring us lunch when it comes, will you?"

I nodded. "Sure thing," I said, before returning to the physical realm. Once there, I knelt for a few moments, my hands on my lap, taking in deep breaths. So many phase shifts in so little time had taken a lot out of me. I had to take a rest. A few drinks of water later, I went around searching for the others that had been brought with me to Argus. A few at a time, I pulled them into the twilight realm, explained the plan to them, and then brought them back into the physical realm. The two that I didn't go to were Edric and Emily, since they were busy with Oldritch's condition, whatever it was. However, as dinner rolled around, I saw both of them, with Oldritch leaning on both of them. His eyes were glassy and unfocused, aimed at the floor but seeming to stare through it.

I stopped the trio, refusing to meet Oldritch's weak, accusing glare, and asked if they knew the plan. Both the healthy humans confirmed it, which meant someone must've told them. That worried me more than a little bit. If they were told in the physical realm, the Legion could have heard them. And if the demons heard our plan, it would all be for nothing.

But eventually, night rolled around, or whatever amounted to night in this timeless place. I went to one of the bathrooms and locked it. After cleaning my robes, drying them, bathing, and putting the somewhat clean robes back on, I retired to my bed, some kind of emotion burning in my heart. Laying in the middle of the bed, I tried to pinpoint what it was.

Jason laid down behind me and Anna fell asleep in front of me. The albino girl fell asleep in moments, thanks to Jason's relentless training. I feel her pain. But as I was falling asleep, something happened that I definitely did not expect. Jason's arms wrapped around me. I froze, eyes wide. Was he even awake?

I decided the feeling wasn't altogether unpleasant, and let my eyes grow heavy. I realized what the strange burning, tickling, hiccuping emotion was. I hadn't experienced the pleasure of its company in a week, but now that we had a _plan_, something we could do to _escape_, it graced me with its presence yet again.

Hope.

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><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think!<strong>


	28. Chapter 28:Tasty Horses

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Huge, huge thanks to my wonderful beta dharak!**

**Chapter published 11/21/12. Happy Thanksgiving everybody. That is, if you celebrate!**

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><p><span>Layalith<span>

A great crash resounded around us, thunder rolling through the white haze of our teleportation orb. I was held suspended, incredible forces swirling around me and immobilizing me like a cocoon, a prison. The light flared, accompanied with deafening cracks. Crack... crack... cra-ka_BOOM!_

A massive shockwave slammed into me, and the blinding glare vanished in a moment. My stomach rose into my throat and air rushed along my head for a moment before I hit something, my legs buckling from the impact. I opened my eyes and looked around. The air was bitter, making me cough. We'd appeared on the new world in mid air. A thud signaled Selriona's limp body hitting the ground... _again._

We were in a cavern, made of dark red stones nearly black in their coloration. The cave was dark, but the stones gave off a faint muddy light which kept the environment from being pitch black. The hole in the ground looked barely tall enough for Selriona to stand up in, but plenty wide for her to pass out in, as she was now. We appeared to be in its edge, since the cavern ended just a few meters beyond the wall of the dragon's body, and the path out quickly twisted out of sight, leaving anything beyond invisible. Stalactites dripped water onto the ground, being intercepted and absorbed by stalagmites in several places, as long as splashing on the water skins that fell randomly with us. One pillar of the two spikes had reached together and formed a solid column of the pale rocks, and on the other side of the cave was something that might have once been like that, but it had broken at its middle and fallen down, like a tree felled by lightning. Selriona's head laid by this one, her horns having scraped a long white gash on its still upright half, her underbelly towards me, wings limp.

To my left sat Orande, who landed on her feet and was now busy brushing herself off. To my left, towards the curvature of the cave, was the human pair. They stumbled to get to their feet, helping each other up. I bit down on my tongue seeing the husband and wife, a twinge of bitterness rising in me, reminding me what I had lost to _their_ faction.

Before I could grow angrier, the night elf took charge of the situation. "We need to protect Selriona while she recovers," she said in an annoyed tone. She swapped to Common and after talking a bit more, the humans nodded. She turned her obscured eyes on me. "Layalith, I'll guard Selriona. You, Derek, and Anastasia go to the mouth of the cave, if there is one. Assess the situation, and all that. Come back when you're done. And try not to kill each other."

I frowned. "Right." I turned to the two humans and stalked forward. I pointed towards the direction the cave went, words not needed. They eyed me carefully, but followed after me. The cave was quite long, winding upwards towards some unknown destination. As we approached, the gentle wind that blew through the cave's lower areas steadily strengthened. The sharp rocky protrusions from the ceiling and floor diminished in their size, turning from the leading points of javelins to enormous dragon fangs, then to bumps on the ground, then vanishing altogether.

Less than a minute later, we spotted the entrance, or exit, as it were.

We'd seen many strange worlds on this suicide mission. Acidic rains, mountains taller than any on Azeroth but completely devoid of snow, a garnet sun that took up the entire sky. Even that shattered world occupied by nether-eels.

We'd never seen anything like _this._

The sky was dark, obscured with blood red clouds. In between them were cracks of white where the clouds thinned, giving the sky the appearance of blood streaked with pus. A harsh, dry gale wind swept through the acrid atmosphere, which stung my lungs and made my eyes water. The ground was equally colored as the inside of the cave, like the entire world had turned into a volcanic wasteland. Irregular spires of stone stuck out at random intervals, some reaching no higher than my knee, and some mountains taller than the World Tree. Some looked like flowers yet to bloom, others like skeletal hands reaching out of the earth, and some others like very oddly colored diamond clusters. A few of them vanished into the cloud cover high above. Several had gaping maws in them, caverns waiting to devour their next meal.

What really stood out were the streaks of fire criss-crossing the landscape, little blazes rushing along the mountains, smoke rising up behind them, lightning up the dimly lit world like a million fireflies. Most were too far away for me to make out anything, but some of the closer ones I could see were not actual fires, but what appeared to be combustible horses.

"Let's move back," I said, wiping early beads of sweat off my brow and nearly cutting my forehead with my armor. "Don't want to draw their attention." Both the humans looked at me confused, and I just rested my face in my palm. I regretted that quickly, since my palm was encased in _armor._ I didn't wear it all the time, of course, and if we found a reasonably safe spot I'd take it off in a heartbeat since it was sweaty and hot and it didn't breathe _at all._

I pointed to them and to me, then back into the cave. Their mouths opened in recognition, and we slunk back into the cave, out of sight from any burning equines. The trek back into the bowels of our mountain went in silence, and soon we reached Orande and Selriona again. For the past few jumps, the Twilight dragon always passed out at the end of the trip. After we escaped the shattered planet infested with the nether beasts, Selriona had passed out for a few hours. That had been weeks ago, and while it wasn't rare for us to find water to replenish our stores with, we were running out of food. We'd planned for one month; clearly that wasn't going to be enough. Even if we reached Argus tomorrow, we'd still need to actually rescue them, and then there's the _return_ trip. And the increasing strain meant only one thing; we were getting closer. The last jump had her passed out for an entire day. What would this one bring?

The rise and fall of her flanks was slow and deep, and I could see Orande feeding a faint stream of ocean blue mana into her neck. The capacitor around her neck was drained dry, the rich arcane colors faded to a steely gray.

"How is she?" I asked, tilting my head curiously.

Orande turned around, glaring at me as best she could with concealed eyes. "How does it look? Unconscious, mana deprived, dehydrated. I think there might be some internal trauma too, can you help?" I was about to rebuke her at the rude tone she asked me in when I remembered her condition.

I nodded. "Sure." I jogged over and knelt by her side, Selriona's enormous head right before us. Now that I looked closer, I noticed several things I didn't before. Her six tusks appeared to have extended during the teleportation, creating three razor-sharp scythes along her jawline. Her eyes twitched beneath their lids, and her purple scales appeared slightly drained in their coloration, one or two even flaking off to reveal vulnerable, tan/dark blue flesh beneath. I called up my magic, manipulating the Light into the few basic healing spells I knew. I cast several of them, and glancing down her body I saw her stomach rise a bit, where I probably mended a rib or two. Meanwhile, Orande and the humans had been exchanging words, no doubt about the condition of the world outside.

I sat back. "I can't do much more, healing isn't exactly my expertise. If you want, you can drain my mana and give it to her. Light knows she needs it more." Orande didn't seem to hear me, instead talking excitedly, or happily as the case may be, with the humans. "Orande?"

She snapped her head over to me. "Oh, right," she said gloomily. She stuck out a hand at me and I gasped, feeling my mana pool drain at an alarming rate, azure energy flowing out of my stomach and hovering around the night elf's hand. She moved the arm over and pressed it under the dragon's head, where it flowed into her. It didn't seem to do much at all. Orande turned he gaze at me. "According to their description, we're on a world covered in black rock and horses on fire, right?" I nodded. She smiled. "Well, _that's_ just fucking perfect. We're on Xoroth, the world of the dreadsteeds." She frowned. "Why did the draenei pass through _Xoroth_ of all places? Wierd, but I won't complain. Those horses can be useful to us."

A raised a brow. "You want to ride dreadsteeds?" I asked, more than a little wary of riding on _warlock_ horses.

She shook her head. "No no, don't be silly. I want to eat them."

My eyes bugged out of my head, running her words by my mind again. It didn't make any more sense the second time around. "You want us to eat... demonic... _horses?_"

"We're out of food, Layalith. We don't know when we might get another opportunity like this. You can bless the meat so that its demonic taint won't hurt us." A rude 'ahem' from Derek drew our attention. The demon hunter looked back to me. "One moment," she said sweetly, before turning to the humans. They exchanged a few words, after which the couple looked disgusted, then pressed their mouths into thin lines and gave her shallow nods. She turned back to me. "Alright. Let's stay here a little while longer while I explain what the plan is."

She repeated the words to the members of the _Alliance,_ and the four of us sat in a circle. "Alright Layalith. Now, Xoroth is a prime world of the Burning Legion. Imps, felguards, satyrs, you name it. I don't know too much about the dreadlords here, but I _do_ know that there is a ruling council of them. Whatever you do, if you see one of them, _run._ I don't know how you'll be able to distinguish them. Taller than others, maybe?" She shook her head before translating angrily, then back to me. "Now, from what you described we seem to have gotten lucky, and we're on a plain where, more or less, dreadsteeds run wild and untamed. It shouldn't be too hard to kill a few without drawing the ire of the locals. I need to stay here and guard Selriona, make sure nobody stumbles on us. You three will need to go on your own."

"What?" I hissed, before she held up her hand for me to stop and translated to the others, then motioned for me to continue. "That's a terrible idea! Not only is there a really, really big language barrier between the three of us, but they are the _Alliance,_ and I am the _Horde._ We'll end up killing each other!"

Orande reached to tug on her hair, which looked disturbingly psychotic with the smile plastered on her lips. "For the love of Elune, what is _wrong_ with you? We desperately need food, not only to reach Argus, but to return, and I doubt we can rescue captives from the Burning Legion's homeworld on an empty stomach." I bit my lip. "Furthermore, we have no idea why the Legion's doing this. But mark my words, it's purpose is to _end_ our world." Images flashed through my mind of what Azeroth would be reduced to. The great oceans little more than basalt plains, Mount Hyjal ground to sand, Silvermoon city's gates shattered and tosses aside like children's toys, the statues of my heroes gathering soot as ash fell like snow on deserted streets...

"But - "

"No buts," she interrupted. "Are you going to let our world end because you could not put your petty conflict aside? I don't know if you've been paying attention over the past few decades, blood elf, but the Horde and the Alliance? _Nobody_ takes you seriously. Sure, we acknowledge your military powers, but beyond that you are _hollow._ You are the laughing stocks of factions, two little children who squabble over precious toys while the rest of us struggle against that which would see us _all_ dead. So you _will_ put your differences behind you, or so help me Elune I will learn _mind control_ and _force you to._" She stopped her rant and gazed at me with her eye sockets glowing bright green behind the black cloth. Then she turned to the humans, who were also wide eyed, gathering everything from, no doubt, my facial expressions.

She spoke a few words in Common, then turned to me. "Have I made myself clear?"

"Yes," I hissed. The humans also nodded, their lips moving to form an unfamiliar word. Even after all this time, I _still _hadn't picked up a word of Common. Yay. "You'll protect Selriona while we go out and hunt dreadsteeds." I looked at the humans, who distrustfully returned the look, and motioned to the exit. With less than cordial glances, we departed once again.

Before too long we were once again outside in the hellish landscape of Xoroth.

"Alright, how to ask," I pondered to myself, drawing the attention of the humans. An idea struck me. I held out a palm and with my other hand trotted four fingers along it. The woman nodded, pointing to the horses and neighing. "Good." I kept trotting my hand-horse, then made it abruptly lie down to the side. I put away my hands and shrugged, hoping that would successfully get my point across.

The human man's face lit up, and he opened his mouth with an 'Aha!' that was recognizable across all tongues. He knelt to the ground, carefully shifting to avoid sitting on a jagged spike of stone, and slung his pack off his shoulders. He zipped it open and rummaged through it for a moment before pulling something out carefully. It was a metal contraption, with jagged lines painted on a rounded side. He grabbed it and pulled, _opening _it up. I realized the jagged lines weren't painted, they were metal teeth, where the trap would snap together when triggered. A pale blue crystal spun around in its center, steaming in the heat. He closed the trap and placed it on the ground, inactive, before forming his own hand-horse. He walked it through the air towards the trap, and then touched it lightly with one finger, and his hand-horse fell over dead._  
><em>

"I see," I said, before realizing they couldn't understand. Anastasia and I lure a dreadsteed to Derek's frost trap, which the fiery horse would NOT take to well. Quite brilliant, except for one tiny little detail.

I formed a horse and trotted it to the frost trap, then 'rewound' time, moving my horse away, then I made it go on, away from the trap. They both nodded, and pondered this.

Anastasia held out her hand, palm up, shook it a bit, and looked at me expectantly. Confused, I held out my own hand in the same way, and made the same movement. The motion inundated me with muscle memory, and I did it again, the Light briefly flaring to life in my hands. I understood. I pointed to her and I, then out towards the endless plain of dreadsteeds, then at Derek, then at the ground. He nodded and placed the trap on the ground, opening it carefully, the ice crystal springing to life. I called on the Light, blessing each of us with increased strength.

Anastasia nodded and spoke a few words to him. They chattered for a bit, and then she turned to me, taking her daggers out from where they hung at her waist, and pointed towards the top of the mountain we were on. She began to hike, and I went after her, quickly overtaking the human. Like hells she was going to lead _me!_

Of course, the moment I did she sped up, trying to overtake me. I growled, and sped up again, scanning the area for any dreadsteeds at the same time.

So far, no real conflict had erupted between me and the humans, thank the Light. Our language barrier prevented us from going beyond hostile glares and angry tones of voice, and even then we were kept relatively docile by either the psychotic demon hunter with us, or by the giant freaking _dragon. _But now there was nobody here to keep us reeled in and, despite the mission at hand, I found myself arguing with the human as best I could given the language barrier, over who was to draw the attention of the sleeping dreadsteed on the relatively level plateau of crimson stone.

I motioned to her, and made a running motion. I was weighed down by my armor, not to mention she was the one with rogue training! She kept motioning to my armor, no doubt insisting I'd have a better chance of survival, then making an amateur casting motion to show that the Light would help me.

I shook my head at her latest attempt to convince me, crossing my arms and glaring down at the shorter human. "For the _last_ time, I am not the one drawing its attention! I can keep you safe long enough to get back to your husband - "

She cut me off with her own string of Common, which made my anger flare. No member of the Alliance cuts _me_ off. I raised my voice, and so did she. Before too long we were in a full blown shouting contest, neither of us needing to know the words to know that the other was saying some less than kind things.

A single huff filled the air, combined with the crackle of fire. We both froze at the same time, looking up at the dreadsteed that had woken up and turned its incendiary gaze on us. Oops.

"Run!" I shouted at the same time she yelled. We both sprinted back down the mountain as fast as we could, but obviously, the demonic horse was faster.

I felt something hot slam into my back, sending me down onto the ground. I called on the Light for strength as what felt like a branding iron pressed into my armor. I pushed myself up as hard as I could and the dreadsteed whinnied, its weight vanishing from me as I scrambled to my feet. I spun around and raised a hand to the sky, calling upon the Light. A blazing iron hammer materialized above the horse and slammed onto its head, stunning it.

"Go, go, go!" I shouted as we sprinted down. Anastasia took the lead, and for once I wasn't about to complain. I was a lot better equipped to handle a direct attack from that thing than her, and from the sound of things my Hammer of Justice had worn off and it was coming back. A sense of justice filled me, overcharging my mind with thoughts of righteous imprisonment and holy wars against the undead. I spun around and let the light of my eyes flare, peering into the dreadsteed's dark soul and _judging_ it.

The burning horse shook its head and slowed down, shackles of holy light shimmering in and out of existence around its hooves, weighing it down. I turned my attention back to running forward. There, there was Derek and the ice trap! Almost there, just a little further!

I leaped over the entrance to the cave and landed clumsily on the ground opposite the ice trap, almost triggering it. We backed up, putting some distance between us and the dreadsteed as my judgement faded and it came at us full speed. It circled around the cavern and charged at us, its head lowered like a battering ram, and stepped in the ice trap.

The crystal shattered into pieces with a _crack_ that went on for several seconds. The magic within exploded out and up, wrapping the dreadsteed in thick coils of blue mist. It whinnied in pain and reared up on its hind legs moments before the mist hardened to ice, entombing it in a deep blue crystal.

Now that it wasn't bearing down on me, I could inspect it more closely.

On even footing it would be as tall as I was. Its hooves were backwards and blazed brilliant white. The bottom of its legs didn't seem to have any flesh on it, instead bone that glowed white with heat right above the hoof. As the bones rose to their respective knees they faded to a burning red, before being swallowed by the sinewy maroon flesh. Most of the dreadsteed was dark red, with a few exceptions, such as the red goatee under its chin, above which fire crackled inside both nostrils. It didn't appear to have eyes at all, just empty sockets overflowing with miniature explosions, the superheated smoke rising out and up. A crown of horns formed half a circle around the top of its head, and in between its eyes was another spike pointed straight out, making any charges it performed lethal. Two enormous spikes stuck from the sides of its forelegs, joined by what appeared to be a red leather chestpiece but on closer inspection was actually just a part of the horse patterned to look as such. Even the red saddle on its back was part of its flesh. Its frayed tail had a glowing red core, and even through the ice prison, the flames on its hooves, eyes, nostrils, and down its neck blazed with the light of a forest fire.

The flames cracked the ice.

The other two noticed this as well. Derek already had his bow out and notched an arrow, Anastasia settled into a stance, and I readied my sword. He said something, likely along the lines of 'That's not good!'.

Cracks emerged from the inside of the ice, rippling outward with a series of sickening crunches. Mist stopped flowing off the ice, and the moment the first of the cracks merged with another, the entire thing exploded. I raised an arm to shield my eyes from the shower of ice. I _would _have brought my helmet with me, but a _certain_ dragon couldn't wait for the blacksmith back in Silvermoon to repair it.

When I lowered my hand, the dreadsteed was shaking its head, steaming ice crystals falling away from it. Its flames seemed dimmed, the fiery white of its hooves dimming to yellow. I called on the Light, sealing myself with holy fury. I charged forward while it was recovering and let my sword swing through the air, the light cutting through its flesh and leaving a deep wound, the power of the Light within me forcing its attention on me. It swung its spiked head at me, and I was too slow to dodge. My armor absorbed the stabs, but the force still knocked me aside. An arrow pierced its flank, making it whinny.

It wheeled around, fixing eyes on Derek, and scraped a front hoof along the ground. It charged forward with its head lowered, the spike on its forehead ready to gore him. At about that time I landed, pulling myself to the ground. I missed what happened as I did, but when I looked again I saw Derek safely to the side, with Anastasia on the demon horse's back, daggers plunging into its saddle-shaped flesh.

Even weakened from the ice, the fiery mount was strong, and shook her off after a few stabs. Now that she was off and not in his line of fire, Derek shot it again. It _screeched_ in pain, a noise I was not at all expecting from the dreadsteed. The fire on its neck and hooves flared, engulfing it, and faded. My jaw dropped when I saw what happened. It wounds were _healed, _as if nothing had happened at all. I charged at it again, slashing at it several times, but each the three of us got anywhere more fires rose up and sealed its injuries. The horse reared up on its hind legs, ready to brings its hooves down on me. A sudden gust of wind knocked me out of the way as it slammed into the place where I'd been a moment before.

I shook my head. This wasn't working. We needed to put this thing down with one fell swoop. And I knew just how to do that.

"We need help with this," I muttered. I placed my sword on my back, where tiny nicks along both it and my armor held it in place through friction. I placed my hands together and called on the Light. Holy energy swirled around my hands, and my hair fluttered in a suddenly generated breeze. Lines of Holy Light formed a ring around my feet, flowing and swirling around me as I finished the summoning spell.

A solid wall of metal forced me straight up, suspending me in mid-air as something large materialized underneath me. A red miasma surrounded my charger, and I smiled, pulling out my sword. I pointed it at the dreadsteed which was swinging its hooves at Anastasia. She managed to dodge them, but it was clear that the shear heat which, judging by the increasing glow of the hooves, was returning to its full strength, was keeping her utterly on the defensive. Not for long.

My charger dashed at the dreadsteed, lowering its head to stab it with the horns on its head. The dreadsteed had more spikes, but my holy horse had _larger_ ones. And armor. And me riding it.

My steed stabbed it in the flank, and my sword came down onto its burning neck. The demonic horse jerked away, shaking its head weakly. Flames began to crawl over its form...

_No you don't._ I called upon the Light again, and something formed itself in my left hand. I gripped the hammer and tossed it at the horse, where it collided with a deafening crash and an explosion of Holy Light. At once it fell over limply, the fires going out. Whatever parts of it that glowed slowly cooled until they were a chalky white, like burned coal, with black cracks criss-crossing them.

I patted the plated neck of my horse. "Thank you," I said, before dismounting it. The charger faded into a cloud of red mist, which faded into the wind the moment my feet touched the ground. "Easy," I said. All three of us approached the fallen dreadsteed and, without any further words or gestures, each took one part to lift. I took the head, Derek took the body, and Anastasia the hind legs. We hefted it up, knees buckling under its weight, and headed back towards the cave. Before too long we returned to Orande and Selriona, dropping the dreadsteed down with a _plop._ I noticed something about its puncture wounds; they weren't bleeding. Instead, soot filled them. Tasty.

The night elf got up from the rock she leaned against and walked over to us, her poisoned weapons resting on the ground next to her.

She poked the horse with her foot and nodded, despite looking quite unpleased. "Very good," she said disapprovingly. "But two things. One, I doubt it's fit for our consumption. And two, I seriously doubt this one will be enough for both us _and_ a starving dragon."

"What if she were to shift into mortal form?" I asked.

She shrugged. "I know a lot about dragon physiology, since my guild interacts with them a lot, but not that much. I don't think eating in mortal form fills them up a lot." The humans began speaking with her. She brightened up and nodded. "Never mind, I was wrong. But all the same, better safe than sorry. Let's get a few more just to be safe. Layalith, I'll go with them this time to get a few more. Can you stay here and purify this one's flesh?"

I shrugged. "Sure. Any progress with Selriona?"

She shook her head. "Not much. Her mana pool's recovered to about half, but she's dehydrated, so from here on out all we can do is feed her our own mana until she wakes up and she can drink. I tried waking her up, but it's almost as if something - or some_one_ - is keeping her asleep. Just keep watch over her and cleanse this dreadsteed, alright? We'll be back." She turned to the humans and chattered in Common a while, before she scooped up her warglaives and they headed out, leaving me alone with an unconscious, several-ton dragon, with only my sword and the carcass of a dreadsteed to defend myself with. Still, I decided that risk of discovery was very low, so I took off my heavy armor. I groaned, cracking several of my joints now that the stiff plating was off. I felt so _off_, sticky. A bath sounded _heavenly_, but there was nothing around to use.

I sighed and got to work, leaning next to the extinguished horse's body and placing my hands on its flank. Warmth seeped through its leathery skin, devoid of fur, and I closed my eyes, sensing the magic inside of it. Sure enough, the thing was absolutely tainted with darkness, drenched in it. As if I'd expected anything else. I called upon the Light and exorcised it, hoping to purge it of the corruption. A flash of holy magic filled up the cave, but when I examined the dreadsteed again, I noticed that only a small portion of its flesh had been affected, and even then only partially purified. I shook my head. Great.

After having my mana drained to help Selriona recover, and using what had recovered to fight the dreadsteed, I didn't have much left in me to exorcise the blasted thing. Glancing over to Selriona, I walked over to one of the leather flasks. I took the initiative and drank a little out of one; after all, we had plenty of water to go around after visiting that world made almost entirely out of _ocean. _Thank the gods for islands.

I opened my mouth and drizzled the water into my throat. The liquid, while not exactly _cool_, was insanely refreshing, reminded me just how awful the air on Xoroth was. After a few seconds I took the flask away, sealed it, and placed it back, returning to the dreadsteed's flesh. I called up my magic again, and got to work. I was just finished purging the last of the corruption from the demonic warhorse's body, leaving only its legs and hooves tainted, when somebody groaned lightly, snapping me out of my trance to seek out the noise, ready to blast it if it turned out to be demonic in its origin.

I followed the direction of the noise to the resting dragon. Her eyes were half open, slit pupil nearly round beneath the scaly lids. Her mouth opened ever so slightly, showing off the points on her fangs. She groaned again, flicking her eyes over to me.

"Nice to see you're awake," I said. "How are you feeling?"

"R'lorash, belanark.." she whispered hoarsely.

I tilted my head. "I don't know Draconic," I said.

She blinked. "Water, please," she croaked.

I got up. "Alright, that I understand. You'll need to shift to your mortal form. Only way it'll be enough water."

She groaned again, thick indigo light enveloping her scales. The light glowed bright, forcing me to turn away. When it dimmed again, a human was laying on the ground, purple robes slightly gray. Selriona was on her side, her legs tucked into her stomach and her arms splayed before her. I grabbed a leather flask of water and hopped over to her. I pulled her into a sitting position, and from there she placed her hands on the ground, mustering the strength to keep herself up. I held the water to her mouth like a mother hen and, after a few seconds of her inhaling water, pulled it away. She leaned back down onto the hard earth, closing her eyes.

"How are you feeling?" I asked.

"So tired... and thirsty. Where are we? Where are the others?"

"We're on Xoroth, and the others are out hunting dreadsteeds. I already helped them get one, I was exorcising it when you woke up." I cracked my neck. "You should probably go back to sleep, you need your strength."

"Mmm, you're right." I didn't hear another word from her, and her breathing sank into a slow, rising and falling tide. I turned back to the dreadsteed and continued to work my magic on it. By the time Orande and the humans returned, I had completely purified the demonic horse, leaving just pre-cooked flesh and charred white bones. The demon hunter stepped over to me and, in a single smooth motion, cleaved her warglaives downwards onto the ashy white legs, slicing them off without a sound.

"Is this one safe to eat?" she snarled.

"Yes, it is. Already cooked too, what an advantage. Want me to get started on that one?" I asked, motioning towards the one they had plopped onto the ground moments before.

She shook her head, but stayed cross. "No, no. Rest up, let your mana come back. Besides, we don't want to use the Light too much in too short a time. Any progress with our Twilight friend?"

"Actually, yes. She woke up a few minutes ago." I motioned to her human body. "I had her shift to a mortal form and gave her some water. How're we doing on that front, by the way?"

Orande turned her gaze towards the waterskins scattered throughout the cave. "At the pace we're going, three more worlds, if we _really_ ration it."

I sighed. "Great. Just great. I hope we reach Argus soon. This is drawing out far too long for my liking."

She grunted, then turned happy. "I concur." A cough reminded me that, sadly, the human couple had not ceased to exist. She turned to them and began speaking in Common. After a few words were exchanged between the three of them, she turned back to me. She seemed relaxed and patient, so it was safe to assume she was anything but. "Well, while we're waiting for her to wake up, let's eat. Somehow, I feel these two will last us for _quite_ a while." She moved towards the older corpse.

"Wait," I asked suddenly, holding out a hand to stop her, well aware she could just _push_ past me. "What are we going to cut it with?" Her eyes wandered to the sword I had taken off with my armor. Was she serious? That was a _sword._ It was used to _kill things._ Cutting meat was... was... beneath it!

"How do you think?" she asked, dead serious.

* * *

><p><span>Selriona<span>

"What exactly am I looking at here?" I asked the Red dragon besides me. This dream was, even as far as Nalestrasza's dreamscapes go, strange. The ground beneath me was nonexistent, yet something held me up like solid stone. All around me was the night sky, patterned with stars so densely that the black canvas took on a rusty glow. Nalestrasza stood to my right, and before both of us was a shining blue orb of light. It was about the size of one of my horns, loops of azure flame leaping up from it and crashing back down, black dots littering its surface. Around it, two spheres half its size were locked in orbits of different size. The closer one was the color of dry blood, with white cracks on it, and the other was covered in what looked like smoke, obscuring any glance at the features below.

"This is a model of the star Xoroth orbits. You remember what I told you about stars and orbits, right? _Please_, I don't want to explain again. We're pressed for time as it is."

I swallowed my annoyance, but I knew she could read my emotions anyway, no matter how well I concealed them. Why did I even try? "Yes, I remember. It looks like the sun goes around Azeroth, but that's because Azeroth spins. In reality, our world goes around the sun. So this is Xoroth's star. Why is it blue? And how did you even _get_ this information?" _  
><em>

"Well, while you're teleporting us, I can look sort of _through _the Twisting Nether into the Great Dark Beyond around us. I decipher the flows of energy around us into a map of the universe. Xoroth seems to be near the galactic core of the Violet Lady, a galaxy just outside of the Circlet of the Titans." I gave her a blank stare. "For the love of - don't worry your pretty little crest over it. What matters is Xoroth here." The red sphere shone for a moment. "And _this_ world here." The black one gave off a dark gray aura for a second. "They're close to alignment, which is good. It'll make teleporting there easier if you don't have to go as far." Now that I looked at it, the three orbs _did_ almost make a straight line.

"You didn't answer my question about the blue," I reminded her.

She shrugged. "Well, I've got a few guesses about that one. Maybe it's some chemical in the star that colors it. However, it's far more likely to just be blue hot. If Azeroth orbited that star as closely as it does the sun, there wouldn't be any oceans."

"Lovely," I said.

"You're getting me side-tracked again! The alignment is important because that smoke-covered world? That's _Argus._"

My heart stopped, and my tusks extended with echoing _shwings. _That little, tiny, insignificant, _crushable_ orb was where Amanthe was held? "Argus? It's that close?"

She shook her head. "No, not quite. This model isn't to scale. But it's billions of times closer than the other jumps you had to make. In four days, Argus and Xoroth will be at their closest, and it's _then_ you must make the jump."

"Alright," I said, eagerness numbing my limbs. My wings shook with excitement and dream-flames boiled about in my crop. Argus, finally, our goal. But this final part would be so much harder than all the rest. "But how do you expect me to make the jump in _four_ days? I've only been resting for one day, and I don't think I'll be able to jump in time."

She turned her rainbow, shimmering eyes on me. Had they always been that color? "You just let me worry about that, Selriona," scolded Nalestrasza. She ruffled her wings. "I'll put your mana metabolization on overdrive and keep you conscious once you've caught up on your sleep. You'll need to drink a lot though, but we have more than enough water. Go make a plan with the mortals. Figure out how you'll save them."

"Don't you have a plan?"

The air around her suddenly began to ripple and distort with heat. A few stars exploded in a blinding display of light before fading back to normal. "As much as I hate to say it," she forced out. "I really don't. I can take the information given and create an utterly magnificent plan, sure. But I don't _have_ any information about Argus. It's an enormous blind spot. All I know is that millenia of demonic corruption have given it fierce nether winds, as you've noticed. Oh, and there are a lot of demons there. That's _it._ You'll be charging in blind, so the best plan I can give you is 'go in the twilight realm.' Beyond that, you'll be on your own."

I frowned, and she read my mind. "Look, it's perfectly normal to be having doubts when you're about to attempt a rescue mission on what is quite likely the single most dangerous world in existence. But you have, for some illogical reason, come this far already. I'll admit, I kinda want to rescue Amanthe too. But - stop thinking that! We are not turning back now. I've got a number of theories as to what the Legion wants with the priests and paladins, and _neither_ of them end too well."

"Care to share?" I asked.

"Well, one is that the demons train them with the Light and them have them fire the magic amplifier onto Azeroth, _killing_ everyone. Another is some sort of mass-healer, keeping their armies alive even in the face of the wrath of the Titans. Yes, I _know_ holy healing injures demons. I also know that if you're good enough you can manipulate it not to. You've seen it happen before, but you never paid attention." She huffed, then shook her head. The model of the Great Dark Beyond began to fade. "But now is not the time for this. For now, wake up. Wake up, eat, drink. And come up with a plan."

The dream rippled like a pebble tossed into a pond, and my eyes snapped open.

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><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think!<strong>


	29. Chapter 29:Red Sky

**Disclaimer: I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Massive thanks to my beta dharak. S/he is a wonderful writer and beta, really go check out his/her stories. They're amazing.**

**Chapter published 12/15/12**

* * *

><p><span>Selriona<span>

"So next is Argus," Orande asked tiredly from before me.

"Yes," I said. It had been four days since we arrived on Xoroth and, true to her word, Nalestrasza had done _something_ to my body to make it heal quickly. I was nearly ready. And also, just as she said, I'd been extremely hungry and thirsty. Especially thirsty, oh Titans. So thirsty. We'd been hard pressed to find more water. Luckily, there was a warm natural spring and tepid pond at the base of our mountain, and with our magic, we could treat it for any nasty parasites. So now we had enough food and water to last the return journey, which I expected to be much, much shorter. The same force that had opposed me coming to Argus would speed us away from it.

I was in my draconic form, laying on my stomach with my forelegs outstretched, holding down the dreadsteed I'd hunted down no more than an hour ago. I reached down and snapped up more of its flesh in my jaws, the tainted meat having no effect on me as it slid down my throat.

I continued. "The next world is Argus, and we to prepare. We have no idea what the situation will be like there, so we'll have to make it up as we go along. That won't stop us from laying down a few general rules. For instance, we have to enter there in the twilight realm."

Layalith nodded while Orande translated. "Good, good. That should give us some room to think. Well, we'll need to find them, wherever they are. How are we going to _do_ that? We have literally the entire _planet_ to search. They could be anywhere!"

"Well, there's a way," I said. "I have a telepathic link with Amanthe, goes both ways. Now, if we're too far away from each other, such as one of us being on Outland, we both suffer a crippling headache until we go back to each other. Outland also interferes with the link, but that's not the point. A few hours after she was taken to Argus, my head seemed to just _explode._ A few seconds later, it stopped, and there hasn't been a message from her since."

"Hold on," Orande interrupted sweetly. "You're saying Amanthe can talk to you?"

I shook my head. "She could, but she didn't say much beyond saying where she was and begging me for help. I don't think she heard anything that I said. And since there's been no message since, and the headache stopped, I think that she or someone else _blocked_ the link on Argus's end."

"Hold on," Layalith said, walking up towards me. "How do you know the link hasn't just been completely ended?"

"I'd have felt it. It wouldn't have been pleasant. Trust me, the link is still there, just turned off. I've tried to reactivate it, but it's never worked. If we get to Argus, though, I _know_ I can reactivate the link, and Amanthe can tell us where they are. Even if she can't, I can follow it to her. It is my theory that I could hear her, but not vice versa because of, once again, those _blasted_ nether winds of Argus. They push her message to me, but don't let mine reach her. But if we're both on Argus..."

"You'll be able to communicate. Find out her location, then organize an escape with her. Alright, that's all well and good. How do we get back _out?_" she stressed.

"I don't know! I don't know how. If I can pull them into the twilight realm and we just teleport-jump back that way, that'll be perfect! But if that's not possible, them, well... I don't have a clue. That's about all we can come up with before going to Argus itself. Anything I missed?" I repeated it all in Common, and waited.

"How much of our resources should we bring?" asked Derek. "If we're forced to leave anyone behind, do we go back after them later and risk the Legion's full might?"

I pondered this, tearing out another chunk of the dreadsteed. "Good point..." I turned to Orande. "What do you think?"

She placed a finger on her chin and shifted her weight to her right foot, her brows furrowing with anger. "We should bring everything. No telling how long we'll be there waiting for you to recover from the teleportation. And besides, we can grab more food and water on the return journey. As for leaving people behind, if we can escape through the twilight realm we won't have to leave anyone behind. But if we can't, then we can not return for anyone lost. The moment we enter the physical realm ,the Legion will spot us, and time will rapidly begin running out before they come down on us _hard._ We can't risk everything for just a few people. We need to get in, rescue whoever we can, and _get out._"

I brought my head down to what little was left of the dreadsteed and snapped it up in one bite. I raised my head and tossed it into the air, where it then fell back down. I opened my jaws wide and swallowed it in one gulp. I shook my head side to side and refocused. "Yes, that sounds like a good idea. So, let's get everything ready. Finish up eating, drinking. Let me know when we can go," I said in Common.

"You sure you can make it?" asked Anastasia, more than a hint of nervousness seeping into her voice. Understandable, we were going to save her daughter. Derek moved over and held her hand, seemingly sharing her sentiments.

I nodded, annoyed a mortal was doubting my abilities. "For certain. Argus is close to Xoroth. Well... _relatively_ close. Now that I think about it, it's a miracle Xoroth isn't more militarized than this, but I won't look a gift Titan in the mouth. But yes, I can make it. Just let me know when you're ready."

They nodded, and turned to the newest demonic horse that had been purified. A few minutes passed while they ate and drank, and I shifted to my mortal form for the extra mana. Once all four mortals were ready, they came over to me.

"Alright," I said in Orcish, Orande translating into Common for the humans. "Here we go. Step one, the twilight realm." I pulled us in, the world shimmering and distorting as indigo mist seeped out of the rocks, the light from the rocks darkening, and the life-forces of the mortals lighting up like a Winter's Veil tree. I braced myself, and whined. "I hate this part."

Before I could put it off any longer, I drained my capacitor dry and unleashed an orb of teleportation. Luckily, they knew well enough to cluster close to me, and so they were all in arm's length. The two remaining dreadsteeds and waterskins were not much further away. Blazing silver and blue light engulfed us, and instantly a wall of wind slammed into me. I felt myself slip, sliding away from the knot in the Twisting Nether that was Xoroth, _away from Argus._

_NO!_

I steeled my will and sought out Argus, a gossamer thread of disturbed Nether linking to it, the thread I needed. My strength was fading quick, my mana pool vaporizing. I pulled us towards it, past Xoroth, towards the draenei homeworld. It drew closer and closer, the chaotic blue, black and white colors of the Nether rushing away from it in a torrent, crashing on our orb and piling up like water. With one last grunt of effort, I pushed us into the heart of the maelstrom and tethered us back to reality.

Exhaustion slammed into me, but with nowhere near the strength it had the past few teleports. The next thing I noticed that we were falling, and the ground that met our feet was smooth and even, not at all like the spiky, rough terrain of Xoroth.

I looked around, stunned, taking in the scenery.

We appeared to be on top of a mountain, made of smooth, black basalt. It was night, the stars above unfamiliar, dense and bright. The stars lit up the darkness almost as well as the sun would've back on Azeroth, the black backdrop of the sky turning dull red. Turning around, I saw an incredibly dense cluster of stars, like a beehive.

The mountain was a smooth dome, stretching all around us. We were above the cloud layer, an impassable canopy of black-tinted-purple clouds stretching into the horizon, flickers of blue lightning peeking through the fog. There was not a demon in sight, just the peak of this mountain, the night sky, and an endless expanse of shadowy clouds. My heart thundered in my chest.

"Where are we?" I asked. "I mean, I know this is Argus. But, where?" It dawned on me what I just said. _Argus._ We're on _Argus. _Titans help us, the Burning Legion's home world. The residents of this one planet have crushed hundreds, thousands of other similar worlds to dust. I'd only seen the ones the draenei just so happened to travel to. All of a sudden I felt incredibly tiny. How had Azeroth, little, tiny Azeroth, held out against this unstoppable engine of destruction? I recalled how, so very very long ago while I was still a drake, an Infinite dragonspawn had caught me in a temporal rift and shown be the entirety of existence. A similar such feeling engulfed me now. We were so small, so weak.

"I think I know where we are," Orande said. "The story of the draenei is that the Prophet Velen took those who were willing to turn down Sargeras's offer to the top of a mountain, where the Naaru vessel Oshu'gun took them away. We've been following the path of Oshu'gun this whole time, it only makes sense we'd end up on this mountain."

"Makes sense, but I don't understand something. I do not see _any_ demonic corruption, at all. This place should be awash in it." I narrowed my eyes. Something was off here.

"Maybe the Legion decided to leave this mountain alone, out of spite for the Naaru, or the draenei?" Layalith suggested. "As a gesture of 'You're not worth our time'."

"Could be, could be," I muttered. "I'm gonna try and see if I can reactivate the link with Amanthe. Give me a moment." I closed my eyes, and sought out the shut link. It was easy to find, since I'd used it to banter with my friend nearly every day for the past century. And, sure enough, it was inactive, a clump of magic shutting it off. And it was within range of my magic. I reached in and plucked at the magical lines, unraveling the spell-block, and prepared myself. What had been happening to Amanthe? Torture? Slavery? Experimentation?

_'Amanthe, can you hear me? Titans, please tell me you can hear me.'_

A minute passed with no response, and I cursed in Draconic. Couldn't she hear me? Or perhaps, after so long without hearing me, she chalked it up to a fevered mind. She was conscious, I knew that much from the slight buzzing of her thoughts in my mind. Titans, I'd missed that. _'Amanthe, it's me. You're not hallucinating, I'm talking to you. Please, answer me!'_

More time passed in silence, the others looking at my face, which no doubt reflected the worry and fear in my heart. I was about to ask her again when...

_'Is it really you?'_ I heard her return, that familiar pressure next to my ears. I'd missed that feeling. I'd missed her voice.

I could've leaped for joy. Success! Finally! _'Yes, yes it's me! How are you? What have they done to you? Where are you?'_

_'WHAT TOOK YOU SO LONG?!' _My head rattled with her shock and anger. _'I don't even _know_ how long it's been, and you respond to me NOW? How did you even get past the block?'_

_'Amanthe,' _I said, cowed. _'I did try to respond! I did, honest, but I don't think my messages got through. I've just removed the block because I'm close enough to do so.'__  
><em>

_'Wait, you don't mean - '_

_'I'm on Argus. I've spent over a month coming here to rescue you. I talked Orande, Layalith, and Anna's parents into coming her too. We're gonna get you out of here.'_

_'You... you came for me.' _She sounded stunned, like she couldn't wrap her mind around the fact that I was here. _'I thought I'd never... I thought you thought I was dead.'_

_'Never! Amanthe, your messages when you were first taken, they got through. I've been coming after you ever since. How have you been? Have they tortured you? Do you need any food? Drink? We brought those with us.'_

_'I'm, I'm fine, believe it or not. They haven't laid a finger on me.'_

_'Really?'_

_'Yeah, sit down. This is a doozy for me to explain.'_

_'Well, go ahead.' _I turned to the others, and spoke in Common, grin too big for my face. "She's okay. Thank the Titans, she's okay."

"What about our daughter?" the humans asked as one.

I held up a finger as Amanthe began her explanation, explaining their theory about a group of Legion-allied warlocks with multiple crystals to open gateways to Argus, a dreadlord herding them into a giant wooden building where they were given water, food, housing, and even bathrooms. I asked her to repeat that part several times, because it simply did not make _any_ sense. Eventually, though, I got a general idea about what had happened. Evidently the Legion wanted something from them, and was willing to go to extreme lengths to make them as comfortable as possible, to make them brainwash their descendants. But what would the Legion want with a cult that obeyed them and wielded the _Light? _Several of Nalestrasza's scenarios came to mind, none of them good for my well-being.

_'Okay, okay,' _I thought, ending her tirade. By that point the sun was coming up, as blue as Kalecgos's scales and half the size of Azeroth's sun. _'So, let me get this straight. You have _not_ been horribly tortured by the Burning Legion for the past month, but instead kept healthy and fed, inside a wooden building with a force-field keeping you from leaving. You and your group have come up with a way to get Anna to overload the exit field, and you will then pull everyone into the twilight realm and run.'_

_'Yeah, that just about sums it up.'_

_'Alright, where are you? I don't think that Anna, as powerful as she is, will be able to break the demons' hold on you so easily.'_

_'Well, I don't know. I don't know any of the landmarks. We could be on opposite sides of the planet for all I know.'_

_'Alright, alright. Hold on. I'll try and follow the link to wherever you are. Don't worry, we're getting you out of here. Get the others ready.'_

_'Roger,'_ she said, excitement resonating through her voice.

_'Another thing. Derek and Anastasia want to know how Anna's doing.'_

_'Anna? She's doing fine, but... she hasn't been the same since we started training her.'_

_'See you in a few hours.' _I turned back to the mortals, the link's familiar pressure diminishing. "Alright, we're going to go find them. Amanthe says Anna's fine." I expanded into my true form and lowered my body to the ground, wings forming ramps onto my back. "Get on, this might be a long flight." They did, walking along my thick wing membranes and hanging onto the thick, plate-like scales on the back of my neck, watching out for the three bony spines near the front. We left the food and drink where they were. If we could get far enough from the demons, we could pick them up on the return journey. "Let's go then. Hang on tight!" I flapped my wings once, twice, then took off into the air, following the faint tug of my link with Amanthe towards her location.

I didn't dare dip below the clouds. Call it paranoia, but I wasn't intent on going any closer to the ground, covered with demons, than I wanted, whether they were on another plane of existence or not. Contrary to my expectations, I followed the link to its end in moments, circling above the other end. I took a deep breath, steadying my nerves. Here we go. I began to descend towards Argus. The dark clouds rose up, clinging to my scales like a dense, choking fog. My eyes stung and I shut them as tight as I could. I held my breath as best I could, but dragons can't go for even half a minute without air, thanks to our metabolism rates, which are notably higher than a mortal's. As a result I was forced to take a few breaths of the foul clouds, which filled my lungs with burning air and clung to my throat. Finally, though, we broke through the clouds to the world below. The mortals on my back all took in deep breaths, filling their lungs with relatively clean air. I opened my eyes, and took in the scenery.

Mountains in the distance perpetually spewed black clouds into the air, where they merged with the layer of darkness enshrouding the world, preventing the slightest iota of blue sunlight from reaching through to the surface. As a result it was, even for the twilight realm, dark. I had no problems seeing, but I imagined the mortals must've been nearly blind. There were a few sources of light, such as massive sparking fel-reavers still in production, existing in the twilight realm since they had yet to be activated. Of course, the most prominent source of light was the dense, _dense_ red fog covering everything, denser in some spots than others, forming trails where demons had passed through an area.

I coughed violently, trying to expel something burning my throat, clinging to it like charcoal. I shook my head and kept looking. There! A giant wooden wheel, with tubes leading into it with water spilling down. I followed the tubes as far as I could. They seemed to be coming from the volcanoes. How healthy was that water? How much did the Legion care about their mortal 'guests'? Enough to treat it for volcanic ash? From what I could make out from a distance, there were no impurities in the water, but perhaps it was just too dark to see anything.

The wooden wheel was covered in a dull green luster, tinted brown with the haze of the twilight realm. Four tethers of fel energy wound away from the wooden building that had to be Amanthe's prison. Each of the four beams lead to a tower, a tall, black, spiky cylinder that seemed less of a building and more of a mass of Argus's stone that had jumped up. At its top I spotted the fel energy coming from nowhere, which meant a demon in the physical realm channeled it. Confirming this theory was a short glob of red mist at the energy's emitting end, with several taller blobs around it standing guard. The story was the same with the other pillars. I set down a fair distance from the towers and lowered my head, coughing violently.

"Oh Titans," I groaned, coughing some more as the mortals disembarked from my back. Whatever had been in those clouds did _not_ agree with me. My throat burned, my eyes watered, and there was something in my lungs. I coughed violently some more until some spit came out, a few traces of something gray in it. The agony in my body subsided, but it was still there. And now that I thought about it, my scales _itched._ Of course. The volcanic ash that made up most of the clouds, it was _stuck under my scales._ Grah! I shifted to a mortal form to fix it, the ash falling off around me in a transparent gray mist, since it no longer had my scales to cling to, and then I shifted back. My insides hadn't improved much, but what could I do?

I turned over to the mortals and began to speak in Common. "Titans. Alright, alright. We need a plan. Four towers that power the force field." I turned towards it. "Give me a moment to analyze it."

I delved into the arcane, watching the spell lines flex and shimmer around it. The barrier was truly a marvelous, complex thing. Dispel resistance like I'd never seen, life-siphoning so that harming those who cross it wouldn't drain its own power, limited self-sustainability, it just blew my mind. I could never hope to fully inspect it, as short for time as we were, but I _could_ garner a few things about its nature and how it could be overcome.

Touching it, needless to say, would be a bad idea. Not only would the life be sucked out of you, it would strengthen the barrier. Attacking the barrier directly with large blasts of energy, like the captives planned to do, would only provide limited success. The attacker would suffer an intense mana drain, and while Anna sounded like she had a lot of mana in her, the four beams sustaining into the force field would surely outpace her efforts. The fel shield would also not vanish the moment all four towers were knocked out. Rather, it would feed itself for a while, maybe five minutes with no outside interference, before finally vanishing. Also, when a 'feeder' beam vanished, the barrier would send a backlash of shadow magic towards the remaining three towers. I wasn't sure what that would do, but I bet it involved a big explosion.

"Alright, I've got a plan. You see those towers?" I asked. They nodded. "They're feeding the barrier. Anna won't have a chance of destroying it if they're up, so we need to knock them out before they can do so. Unfortunetly, the moment any of the demons channeling those beams _stops_, something very bad happens at all the others. So we need to take them out all at once. After that, we need to defend the towers to make sure nobody else starts to empower the barrier again. I'll send Amanthe a signal once the towers are taken care of, that'll be the sign for her to have Anna begin destroying the barrier."_  
><em>

"Hold on," Anastasia piped up, craning her neck up to look at me. "How will we take them out at once? I mean, the shear coordination not to mention the foolishness of dividing up like that - "_  
><em>

"We'll move into place within the twilight realm. I'm certain I can handle two towers at once. Anastasia, you go with Orande. Derek, you go with Layalith." I turned to Layalith and relayed the message to her. She looked rather displeased. "We don't want any especially weak spots. No offense," I said, turning to the mated couple. "But you two together _would_ be a weak spot. I'll handle two of the towers, Orande and Anastasia the third, Derek and Layalith the last. I'll pull us all into the physical realm at once. When I do, assassinate the demon maintaining the beam and do _not_ let anything take its place. At the same time I'll send the order for Anna to begin dissolving the barrier on her side. If even one of the towers come back, well... I don't need to explain that."

They nodded, the humans sharing nervous looks and squeezing each other's hands. "Once the barrier's taken down, I'll swoops us down and the paladins and priests will all run out. I'll try to pull us into the twilight realm. If it works, great! We can escape easily. If I can open us a portal to, well, anywhere on Azeroth really, even better! But I don't plan on being able to do that. I... oh damn it. How do we get to the nether tear? No way we'll be able to wade across that many demons, and I absolutely can not fly that many people." The moment I completed saying that I leaned down, another fit of coughing overtaking me.

Silence reigned. "Well, then what? We came all this way for nothing? Because if they can stop portals, then they'll be able to stop you from teleporting away, right?" Derek asked.

"Well..." I said.

"Alright, I have an idea," he continued, turning his gaze to the demon hunter with us. "Orande, can you open portals?"

"Of course I can't," she responded fiercely. "That's far beyond the scope of magic I command. I use my spells to kill demons, and well at that. But portals? Good luck."

I sighed, suppressing a cough. "Alright, so it seems we're being left with one option. We'll need to run for the mountain as fast as possible, defending ourselves against demons as much as we can. If we can get close enough to the nether tear I'll be able to bring us along with it. If we can just reach even Xoroth, we'll be in the clear. Problem is, how will we get that far?"

"That's a good question," Derek said. "Maybe you could ask Amanthe?" he asked, cracking his fingers.

I did ask her. After a few moments of thought, her response echoed in my head. _'Well, we'd need a shield to protect us. I think I can help Anna create a shield to keep the demons away from us, but if a demon lord comes we're doomed. Anything short of that, though, and we should be fine. It's gonna be hard on her, though, breaking through the barrier _and_ then shielding all thirty of us.'_

_'I'll help her then,' _I returned before telling those around me of Amanthe's plan. _'How haven't the demons noticed you vanishing into the twilight realm to train Anna?'__  
><em>

_'Either they aren't watching us, or they're that confident we can not escape. So, we can we get started?'_

_'Soon, soon. Just gotta get a few things ready on our end first. You all set on your side?'_

_'Oh yeah, we're all waiting near the exit.'_

I nodded, even though she couldn't hear me, and turned to the mortals, shifting to a human form. I walked up to Layalith and reached behind my head, grasping the chain of the capacitor. I pulled it over my head and gave it to her. "Layalith, I need you to channel the Light into this," I told her, tossing the magical relic to her, where she caught it with an armored left hand. "I want it to unleash the Light when I command it to, instead of the arcane."

She nodded and placed a hand over the glass, that appendage shining with the holy magic. Slowly, the flowing arcane energy, which began in the middle of the disk and flowed out, shrunk, turning to a small spot before vanishing entirely. The glass interior filled with what seemed like golden mist, cutting through the rippling shadows and mists of the twilight realm. The shine of Layalith's vitality dimmed slightly, but then she stopped the flow of energy and stumbled.

"Ungh, that's tiring. How's that?"

I took back the capacitor and inspected it. The golden disk's glass covering on one half now contained a sizable measure of the Holy Light. Already, a small tendril of pale amber light was snaking into Layalith, who I calmed down, explaining that all it was doing was draining negligible amounts of the Light within her. Truly minuscule amounts. Within the prison of magic, bronze and glass was what looked like sloshing yellow water, currents shown by the darkening or lightening of the fluid in several spots. I doubted that channeling the Light to wield with my own Old God-given powers would be a good idea, but I was confident I could still use it to turn a good few demons to ash with it. And we _were_ rescuing priests and paladins; it would refill fast.

I placed it back around my neck. "Good, that'll help me a lot." I returned to my true form, looking down at them. "Alright, remember the plan. Take out the towers, hold them until the captives escape, then we guide them to the mountain. If we get close enough I'll be able to bring us back to Xoroth and we'll escape that way. Remember, time is of the essence. The more time we spend here, the more of their army the Legion will be able to mobilize against us. So, first. Layalith and Derek." I launched myself into the air and grabbed both human and blood elf in my claws. They shouted indignantly, but I ignored their protests and carried them up to the first tower, plopping them rather unceremoniously on the flat, cold metal surface. Before I could fly back I gripped the side of the tower, a spell of coughing keeping me there for a moment. I repeated the process with Orande and Anastasia, then positioned myself until I was flapping between the last two towers.

_'Alright Amanthe, we're about to begin. Remember, this will be our _only_ chance. If anyone falls behind we WILL be forced to leave them behind.' _Even her... no. That wouldn't happen. She _wouldn't_ be left behind. I wouldn't allow it.

_'Roger that. I've got everyone ready to defend Anna in case the Legion attacks through the barrier, but I don't think the Legion will try to kill us. Just recapture us.'_

_'In a way, even worse. Alright, now here it goes.' _I turned to the mortals, who had weapons raised to slit the throat of the demon on their tower at a moment's notice. "On the count of three, I'll pull us into the physical realm all at once. After that, there is _no_ turning back. One." My heart pounded within my ribs and I licked my tongue over my fangs. Several of the thicker red globs down below shuffled about. "Two." I unsheathed my tusks with a _shwing._ Light flowed around Layalith. Derek held a trap in one hand, bow in the other. Orande's poisoned glaives began to gleam with pure, red fires. Anastasia's daggers were poised to stab into a 'sentry' demon guarding the one channeling her tower's beam. "Three!" I quickly extended my magic and we rose into the physical realm.

This was going to be bad. I knew it was going to be bad. I prepared myself for just how bad it was.

Somewhat anticlimactically, it wasn't anywhere near as bad as I thought it would be.

I'd expected the ground to be covered in demons, the black ground barely visible through them, a writhing sea of evil and genocide stretching as far as the eye could see. What I instead saw was a rectangular field of maybe a hundred fel-cannons, all oriented so that they couldn't fire at me, nor at the top of any of the towers. Patrolling all around the area in several loosely-woven paths were groups each consisting of a wrathguard, shivarra, one or two felhounds, and a whole slew of imps. Within immediate attacking range there were maybe half a dozen groups, with even more stretching beyond. But I couldn't worry about those now. I had other things to do.

Flames boiled in my crop and flew out of my mouth, magic shaping and twisting the fireball into multiple sharp daggers of twilight energy, which I mentally guided towards the demons at the top of the two towers I'd assigned myself. Channeling each beam, I noticed, was an eredar, the one to my left red skinned, the one to my right gray. They were surrounded by a ring of doomguards. The spikes killed every single one of them, spearing the surprised demons' throats and dissolving them into nothingness. The green beams of fel energy from my towers ended, and half a heartbeat later the same happened for the other two. The shimmering barrier on the massive wooden wheel at the middle of it wall rippled, the spots where the beams had channeled into releasing ripples through the shield, which clashed with each other before rebounding, without losing any of their potency._  
><em>

_'Now, do it now!'_ I shouted to Amanthe.

A moment later a shining yellow beam pierced the barrier, making it fluctuate and a deep _growling_ fill the air. I flew higher up, looking down. The demonic patrols were stunned, still getting over their surprise, not yet comprehending what had happened. But it wouldn't be long before they began their attack and sounded the alarm, bringing the entire Burning Legion down on us. I took the opportunity to breathe in deep and bring fire into my crop. I joined the two and unleashed a massive, wide stream of twilight fire down on the demons below, which hissed, screamed and screeched in pain as the dark flames washed over them, ignoring their shadow resistance. I summoned my magic and placed a twilight prison on the two towers that were mine, the bright purple runes pulsating gently with magic that would make the first demon to touch it completely helpless.

More pockets of demons began to trickle towards us from the horizon, but I didn't both blasting them. Those fel-cannons would tear anyone escaping the prison to shreds, and it had to _go._ I drew on my magic to weave a shimmering dark purple cocoon of twilight magic around me, and began to spit multiple fireballs at the cannons, watching with satisfaction as each one that impacted left a heavy dent in the metal frames, vibrant green fire spilling from their frames. I was destroying them fast, but there were so _many._ As I did, I heard the rushing of flames, the chime of the Light, blades slashing through the air and what sounded like something being hit with a wooden stick as the mortals fought to keep their towers cleared. Most of the demonic patrols that I had not incinerated recovered from the initial surprise and were now beginning to attack me. I was out of range of physical attacks, but that didn't stop the imps hurling fireballs that popped against my shield, or the shivarra casting rocky clusters of shadow that thundered around me.

I blasted the cannons as best I could before my barrier fell, forcing me to focus on the demons attacking me. I swooped down, fading into the twilight realm. The process was slower than usual, though, sluggish. Usually sinking into my Flight's realm was like lowering myself into a warm lake, but on Argus it was as if that water had turned gelatinous, unwilling to let me in. Still, I managed to enter, continuing to fly towards where a cluster of shivarra were in the physical realm. Right before I reached it, I rose up almost completely out of the twilight realm, leaving a portion of my essence there in case I needed to draw energy from within. The three female demons were taken by surprise at my sudden disappearance and reappearance. The shock on their faces only existed for a second before my claws raked through them, goring two and nearly ripping the last one in half. I flicked the black blood off my claws.

_Thud thud thud!_

Before I realized what had happened I was in the air, wings thrusting straight down as my legs pushed me up, moments before a gale of hot wind washed over my underbelly scales. Looking down, I saw greasy green flames clinging to the crater that had formed where I'd been a moment before, acrid smoke rising to fill the air. I looked back and saw that clawing apart the demons had taken me into the cannons' line of fire. I groaned and rained down more fireballs onto them, ignoring the shadow attacks sliding off my scales and the fireballs that lost nearly all their power by the time they reached my height, little more than annoying sparks.

A reverberating, deep noise echoed throughout Argus, and I knew for a fact that it wasn't us.

"That's not good," I muttered to myself before opening up my maw and blasting another fel cannon into ruin.

_'Selriona, what the hells was that?' _Amanthe asked.

_'The alarm, how long until Anna's done?'_ I questioned her, whipping around and unleashing a river of twilight fire at the eredar that had stumbled into one of my twilight prisons, killing him instantly. There had to be something on those that allowed the barrier to be channeled. Why else would they go to the effort of building them?

_'Not long, just a few seconds. How's the outside looking?'_

I spun around in mid-air, biting down on the flying terrorguard that had arrived and tried to stab me in the back with a barbed spear. I clenched my teeth and let go, the two halves falling to the earth below. _'Worse by the second! I'll get the others and meet you at the exit. Get ready to run like you've never run before!'_ I didn't hear her response, if there was any. I unleashed a massive shadow nova to destroy a few more fel-cannons before shooting over to Orande and Anastasia. I didn't have time to take in their condition, grasping them in my hind legs, leaving a twilight prison at their tower and refreshing the one that had been tripped recently. I swept over to Derek and Layalith, grabbed them in my hind legs, and trapped their tower as well. I descended to ground level and dropped them, blasting a few more fel-cannons as I did. By that point only about a dozen remained in working order.

_BOOM!_

With a searing explosion of demonic energy the barrier blew outward, like an bursting bubble of water. I wrapped my wings around the mortals next to me, taking the full brunt of the blast. I grunted and was pushed back a step, but beyond a slight stinging in my scales I was unharmed. Like a flood the mortals began to run out towards me, tossing the occasional blast of Light towards the regrouping demons.

_Thud thud thud!_

Not good! I shot fireballs out of my maw like never before, intercepting three of the cannon shots in midair, causing them to explode safely and inflict no harm. The other five shots that had been fired were dodged, but left acrid flames burning on the ground which the mortals took care to avoid. I looked down at them as Orande used her own weak fireballs to intercept more cannon fire.

Two dozen collected mortals, most in white and teal robes that were more than a little frayed by this point, the pungent stench of their fear mixing with the air and adding to my own. And there was Amanthe, her gray eyes wide and fists clenched, one of them holding the hand of a male with different colored eyes. My gaze hardened as a lot of the mortals looked up at me fearfully.

"Come on!" I shouted over another _thud thud thud_. "Follow me! We're not stopping for anything, even people left behind! Let's go!" Coughing, lungs burning from all my shouting, I shifted to my human form to make myself a smaller target. Demons were beginning to cluster around us. I tried for a moment to pull us into the twilight realm, but the sluggishness had grown tight, and now there was nothing I could do. I also tried to open a portal to Stormwind, Dalaran, _anywhere_, but magical interference kept me from using any Azerothian portal anchor. _Why_ didn't I have the foresight to create one on Xoroth? We could be out of here already!

Demons were already beginning to swarm around us. Felhounds, imps, succubi, wrathguards, one or two floating eye-covered beholders, flying doomguards filling the skies.

We ran.

* * *

><p><span>Amanthe<span>

Everything happened so fast.

We'd been training Anna when Selriona had contacted me, and everything became a flurry of activity after that. We were getting ready, running her through the things she had to do. If the Legion knew of what we were planning, they didn't do anything to stop us. Maybe they were that confident in our inability to escape. Which would also explain why no dreadlord had come knocking, asking why Jason and Anna vanished into thin air for hours every day. We had gathered at the hallway that ended with the shimmering green force field, with the little girl in front of us all, ready to put her training to use the moment I relayed Selriona's signal.

Now we were outside. _Outside. _Demons surrounded us on all sides but we just ran through them, fighting off the ones that made moves to attack us. Anastasia and Derek had come with Selriona, and the father had scooped up his daughter.

Moving forward was getting harder and harder. I ducked an imp's fireball and retaliated with a pillar of holy fire, which roasted the little creep, and kept running. Someone shouted in pain as a shivarra's swing got him, only for Jason to wave his hand, a flash of light healing the stomach wound. A moment later Anna, still being carried, pointed a hand at the demoness and focused. A solid beam of the Holy Light shot out and got her in the eye, making the six-armed women scream and fall to dust. Selriona tossed balls of twilight fire around, which exploded in the increasingly dense demon ranks. Anna soon stopped shooting and closed here eyes, making a yellow sphere around us to keep the weaker demons away. I narrowed my eyes and summoned my magic, aiming it at a group of felhounds with lit up antennae. A moment later they whined in pain as they sailed through the air, knocked away by the explosion of twilight flame I'd summoned. I dispatched another with magic, and the others killed the one remaining.

One thing we had in our favor was that the demons had to hold back against us. We were obviously valuable to them; they couldn't risk damaging us. They'd have to exercise extreme caution to prevent harming us, have to be careful to make sure they were attacking Selriona, or Orande, and not _us. _But... just because they couldn't kill us didn't mean they couldn't knock us out, as I learned quickly when a felguard charged at Oldritch, the demon's bulky skin smoking and turning black as it charged through Anna's barrier. It's impressive weight and armored shoulders knocked the paladin out cold. A moment later Anastasia was there, planting a long, wicked dagger in the demon's throat, but by then a succubus, standing outside the fatal barrier that kept moving through Argus towards our salvation, reached out her whip. It wrapped around Oldritch's waist, and yanked the fallen paladin into the thick of the demons. That's the last I ever saw of him.

My attention was drawn back to the fight by a fireball nearly hitting me in the left temple. I yanked myself to the side, where the flame spell sailed past me, so close I could feel the beginnings of sweat on my brow vaporizing. It flew off without hitting anyone, dispersing when the magic holding it together vanished. I spun around, smiting the imp that had dared fire in my general direction, before calling down holy fire on another. An explosion of twilight energy rocked the world as Selriona cast one of her most powerful spells, sending the thickening demon army around us back and clearing room for us to move forward.

It didn't take long for the Burning Legion to realize Anna's shield wasn't as potent as it seemed. Soon, demons by the handful began to charge across it, most of them surviving the blast of Light. A shivarra, an infernal, several types of 'guard'. Derrek set the pace, since he was the one holding Anna, and _she_ was the one channeling the shield that kept us relatively safe. As a result, the entire endeavor was a race to keep up with Derrek and stay inside the shield as he hauled ass across Argus, Selriona and... someone else busy clearing a path ahead for him. Only problem was, it was getting harder and harder to push through the army - where did all these demons _come_ from? - and fend them off at the same time. Ellie was caught by a web of shadows and tugged out. So was Isabella. People were being taken. I could be next. How would the Legion punish me for trying to escape? I thought of what had happened to Oldritch, who was now back in their grasp, and what they had done that left him white as a sheet for eleven days afterward.

No. That won't be me. I'll escape.

As if to say 'Oh really?' a doomguard's barbed spear stabbed at my midsection. I acted on impulse and shielded myself, but that wasn't enough to stop the attack all the way, and it left a sizable gash on my stomach. Healing magic began to lap at my wound, but in my distraction it cast some spell at me. My legs fell out from under me, pain lancing up them as black and dark blue swirls of magic surrounded me, crippling my body and mind. I tried to focus through the pain, but it was like trying to stop the sun from setting. I finally managed to cast a twilight fireball and nailed the doomguard in its right wing-bone, making it snarl in pain and raise a hoof. I dispelled the crippling spell on myself, the pain instantly vanishing.

At that moment its hoof came down, a thunderclap resonating in my ears and throwing me off balance. I noticed that the shell of Light was moving on, leaving me behind. I scrambled to find my balance and redoubled my speed, weaving a shield onto myself to both deflect an incoming fireball and give my run a little boost, letting me catch back up to the middle of the shell where I had the most safety.

"Don't stop!" I heard Selriona shout, before descending into a fit of coughing. Once done, she continued. "Whatever you do, _do not stop!_"

Something whistled through the air, and I hit the deck as somethin sailed next to me, where it would've hit my arm. It embedded itself into someone else's arm - I couldn't recognize them with their back to me - and made them scream. I jumped back as the satyr tossed another knife at me, where it stuck onto the ground. I could see the green glow of poison on it, likely a paralytic venom since they needed us alive. I called forth twilight flame and spotted the demonic night elf, flanked on either side by imps that were engaged in other battles. I finished up my twilight pyroblast and sent it at the satyr. Without waiting to see if the green-furred demon died or just shrugged off my attack I sprinted on, since the time it took to cast that meant I was almost out of the protective barrier of Light.

Time began to blur. I was vaguely aware of an impassable sea of demons around us, thickest towards the direction we were running. My lungs burned with the strain of our run, twilight fire, the Light, fire and shadow flew through the air. A few braver demons pierced the shell and we were forced to fend them off, and they were getting more and more common. And we were getting fewer and fewer as the Burning Legion re-abducted us, one by one. I slapped away a succubus's hand, I unleashed a blast of Holy Light at an eredar, produced twilight explosions to clear out groups of imps targeting Selriona, Derek, the ones that the Burning Legion _didn't_ need alive. I didn't know where we were running, I just trusted that Selriona knew where we were going. At one point it was Jason next to me, weaving what protective spells he could. A few minutes later and it was Selriona, her violet eyes shining murderously as she unleashed explosions of dark magic throughout the battlefield, channeling all her fiercesome power into freeing us. I lagged behind her, and there was Layalith, decapitating a felhound as I used the Light to blast a hole through a succubus sneaking up on her. A satyr slipped through our defenses, and engaged Anastasia in a fight with its own duel daggers. I was unable to watch what happened.

Because a pit lord arrived on the scene.

I gaped, and nearly got knocked out by a shadow bolt. I fired a blast of twilight flame in the general direction of the spell, not seeing where it landed or to what effect. My gaze was focused on the colossal pit lord. I'd last seen one... Titans, eighty years ago, when a corrupt mage had torn one out of Orande's soul. How fitting she was here as well the second time I saw the annihilan. In a moment she had broken free of the protective shell of Light, and I only had a moment to weave a shell of holy energy around her before she vanished into the demonic armies. A few seconds later she began to tear through their ranks with burning, poisoned warglaives, making her way to the pit lord that was happily calling down infernals within our shell.

The back of my neck tingled and I threw myself forward, barely dodging the flaming, stone fist of one of said infernals. I spun around on my stomach and got up, instinctively speaking a word of pain. The infernal made no sound, but the green fire around its 'joints' flickered and dimmed. My shadows work on infernals, then.

I called up my magic and blasted its mind, or whatever passed for one. It gave off a grating, muffled roar, and swung another fist at me. I shielded myself, which was just enough to stop the fist in its tracks before breaking. The flames came close enough to make me wilt backwards, holding out a hand to let a beam of flaying magic at it. It groaned and charged at me. The infernal lifted its fists and slammed them down at me, forcing me to jump to the side and interrupt my spell. Even so, the shockwave knocked me off balance. It whirled around and almost hit me again, but its flames continued to dim as my word of pain kept eating at it. I wove a plague on it, curious to see how a _plague_ would affect something made entirely out of stone.

As it turns out, quite well. The small pores on its body began to widen and it _howled_ in pain, despite having no mouth. I stepped back, the air going cold around me, and called up my magic again. I spoke a word of death, confident the infernal was close to falling. I was proven correct as the fel fire animating the lump of boulders died out, and the towering creature fell to pieces.

I screamed in pain as something tight and sharp wrapped around my left elbow, sharp spikes digging into my flesh. I turned to face the succubus and, with the arm that wasn't wrapped in her whip, pulled up the energy for a twilight fireball. The energy came slowly with only one hand to channel it, but I still managed to launch the fireball at her. She ducked out of the way of the dark blue fires, which barely clipped her wings, and smirked.

She vanished from sight, but I didn't let that deter me. The whip was still visible, as was the _end_ of it, which moved around as if preparing to wrap itself around my neck. Like hells. I summoned shadows to my throat and _screamed_, the psychic shriek resonating throughout Argus.

The succubus reappeared, but hardly seemed phased. I cursed myself. Of course, of _course_ she'd be resistant to shadow magic. I called down fire from the sky, the holy flames engulfing the demon. She gave out an unnervingly _hinting_ scream before vanishing to ashes, taking the barbed, serrated whip with her. I quickly wove a renew onto my injured elbow, stemming the flow of blood, the sight of the deep holes nauseating even as they closed up.

I fell to my stomach as something heavy collided with my back, white hot spikes of pain shooting through either side of my spine. I gasped as a fair chunk of my mana pool evaporated, and summoned my strength. I spun around, unlatching the felhound from my back and throwing it to the side. I drew up darkness to burn away the mana it had _stolen_ from me, but before I could its antennae flared blue again. My magic suddenly decided it didn't like me and, with a sensation not unlike getting slapped in the face, my casting was interrupted.

I got to my feet and growled, irritated, unable to weave my magic into a simple dark word of agony. Although, that was just my shadows interrupted. I'm a shadow priest, sure, which doesn't help much against demons. But twilight flame _technically_ isn't shadow magic, which means I could still use it, and the demons wouldn't be able to _resist_ it. I nailed the felhound with a twilight fireball, the slimy, greasy flames enveloping its fur as it collapsed, squealing and growling in pain, before vanishing into a puff of black smoke.

I kept fighting, demons coming at me one or two or sometimes even three at a time, with the intent of recapturing me. Once I killed my second terrorguard I realized my situation. I was surrounded by demons on all sides, forming a veritable ocean around me. They were toying with me, I didn't stand a chance. And even worse, if the demons were all around me, then that meant I wasn't surrounded by Anna's light shell...

I shouted and unleashed a nova of holy energy in all directions around me, sending the imps scattering and glanced around me. There! The shell of Light was very far, flickering like a candle drowning in its own wax, heading towards a mountain that stuck up above the clouds. Flashes of light, fire and darkness surrounded it, and the pit-lord was nowhere to be seen. But the main problem was that I'd been _separated!_

"Not happening," I growled to myself, charging at the felguard in between me and my destination. He leveled his axe at me, aiming to bash me with the flat of the blade to knock me out. I ducked below it and charged into the thick of the army. A flurry of arms reached out to grab me, but I just released an explosion of holy Light in all directions to clear something that, if you squinted, resembled a path. Soon, though, that wasn't enough. Even using shields of Light to give me temporary bursts of speed, the demons grew smart quick, directing me to the side. By the time they had me surrounded, I'd only made up half the distance to the others. Add on to that the fact that each step was like trying to stop the world from turning, each breath like trying to halt a hurricane, and I knew that I needed to do something drastic.

A mace came sailing towards my gut, and I let the spell take hold of my body. My insides dissolved, pulse and breaths fading into nothingness as my skin crumpled and turned to a dark mist. My dispersion complete, exhaustion temporarily abandoning me, I hauled ass towards the others. One advantage of dispersing was that, in the darkness of Argus, the demons completely lost sight of me. As I passed by others, they didn't glance at me for more than a second before I was out of sight. I held onto my cloud of darkness as long as I could, even as the wisps of darkness tried to coalesce back into _me._ I managed to stay dispersed right until I caught back up with the others, entering the shell of Light, at which point I returned to normal and the barrier vanished.

Looking closely, I saw Anna, the poor little six year old girl who liked to make little cats of Light prance around on her bed, passed out in her father's arms, a stream of blood running down her nose. Derek's feet trembled, but to his credit he kept running at the same pace. Trouble was, now there was no barrier to keep us together. We could scatter easily, be captured easily. Taking a quick look around, I saw that our situation was getting very bad very fast. Selriona, Orande, and Layalith were still doing their best to fend off the demons. Of the twenty-four of us that started, myself not included, I counted six. Thank the Light, Jason was among those that remained. Anastasia was nowhere to be seen.

Jason was on his back, a felguard poised to knock him out.

Acting on impulse, I thrust out my hand and called to a creature deep within the Twisting Nether. Sure enough, a shadowfiend appeared next to the felguard, and bit its armored leggings with enough force to at least distract it, replenishing some of my mana pool in the process. Its distracted swing went right over Jason's head, and in that time I was next to him, grabbing his hand and nearly tearing off his arm pulling him up.

"Thanks, come on! She says we're almost there!"

My eyes widened and I continued running after them. But as the demons no longer had to worry about a shield of holy energy giving them severe burns or death trying to cross, there wasn't a lot keeping them from just surging in around us, and flying demons blotted out the clouds. Everyone did their best to keep them away from us. Selriona tossed around shadows, indigo flames, and I thought I saw a burst of the Light coming from her at one point. I picked up a doomguard's barbed spear and used it as best I could in combination with my magic, even though the most 'swordplay' I could do was distracting the enemy long enough for either me or someone else to kill them. The only time I killed anything with it was when a felhound pounced at me and I raised it up, stabbing the dog-like demon through the chest.

A shout came out of the air, and I glanced up towards its origin, dropping the spear.

My heart nearly stopped. A doomguard had swept down and grabbed Jason, and even as I stared, was busy hauling him up.

"Jason!" I shouted, raising my hands and thrusting them down. A thick pillar of divine flames arced down from the sky, striking the doomguard in the back. One of its wings stopped flapping and hung limply. It shifted Jason to one arm and pointed the other at me, shadows flickering about it. Pain erupted around me as the shadows crippled my body, but I dispelled the effect the moment it took hold, tossing a blob of twilight fire at the doomguard. The flames splashed along its skin to little visible effect, but I did see it snarl. So I could hurt it.

It sent a little spike of shadows at me, which impaled the ground next to me and _dug_ into the black stone a good distance. I gulped. That could've been my head. Did this one know it needed us alive... or did they already have enough recaptured, and didn't need us? Surely information couldn't move that fast in an army. I retaliated with a shield around myself, then sinking into my shadowform for extra protection. I held my hands together and began to channel twilight energy into a massive fireball, before hurling the pyroblast at the doomguard. Its eyes widened as the fireball honed in on it. Its free hand glowed once more with magic before it tried to wing away with its one remaining functional wing. My pyroblast still hit it, and it _screeched_, dropping to the ground, _Jason with him._

My heart stopped, but just before Jason could hit the ground a narrow ray of yellow energy exploded out from next to me, like cold lightning, and wrapped around his waist. The tether yanked him back, and I swear I saw his soul separate partway from his body before rejoining. Jason hit a patch of open ground with a roll, unconscious from the sudden change of direction. I levitated him and scooped him up in an instant, running after the others. I released a nova of the Light to clear away the demons closing in on us. I saw someone lag behind us, but I couldn't make out who. The land was getting steeper now, running getting harder and harder. The demons took full advantage of this, snatching up someone else.

I heard an unmistakable growl from ahead of us. "_Get out of our way!_" A massive figure expanded before us and Selriona, now in her true form, flared out her wings, streaks of dark blue lightning arching from the talons on them and into the demon army. A river of her flames washed over the demons, clearing a wide, half-circle shaped path before us. But I lagged behind, even with Jason's weight levitated. My breaths were short wheezes, sweat clung to every corner of my body.

"Amanthe!" I heard Selriona shout, turning around to look at me, stopping. Why had she stopped? "_Hurry up!_" She began to glow silver, arcane energy flowing across her scales, condensing in a ball held between her fangs. No, she couldn't be. She was teleporting. A white, hazy orb appeared in a small radius around her, those within would be teleported. _And I wasn't there._

Every step I took felt like I was swimming in molten lead, but I managed to put on a boost of speed nonetheless. _I am not getting left behind. Neither is Jason._

As I neared the sphere, which was growing brighter by the moment, obscuring the fighters within, the impossible happened. I tripped._  
><em>

With a grunt, I fell to the cold, unforgiving ground, dropping Jason. I saw demons rushing at me out of the corner of my eye but being struck down by hasty balls of magic. I struggled to even raise myself on my elbows. Everything hurt, and this was _so_ much worse than Discipline training. My body didn't want to go on. It wanted to just _lie_ _down_ and _give up. _My legs wanted to. My lungs wanted to. I wanted to. It would be so easy...

"Amanthe! GET UP!" I heard Selriona shout desperately over the crackle of arcane energy. She couldn't wait any longer, I knew that. She couldn't afford to wait for me, the Legion would close in on us if she did and _everyone_ would be lost. But I couldn't move. None of my muscles obeyed my command.

The pale orb was no longer transparent, a glowing pearl in utter darkness. _Think, Amanthe. If you can't use your body, what does that leave?_ It left magic. But what spell did I have that could move myself and others? I could use the Light to give myself a surge of inner will, but that simply would not _cut it. _All my shadow spells would just slow me down, at best. Twilight flame wouldn't help, and by the time I healed myself to be able to move it might be too late. What did that leave me with?

The light was growing now, blinding. Almost out of time. The sudden brilliance, while not holy in nature, made the army of demons shrink back from around me. I didn't have time left. An idea sprung to mind. Levitation, one of my most versatile spells. The spell relied on creating a magical repulsion field at one's feet. Not enough energy, and the person would simply be light. Just enough, and they'd float right above the ground, as the magic created air jets. Too _much_ energy...

It was worth a shot. I cast a levitate on Jason, placing half of all my remaining mana into it. He was on the ground, still passed out from the trauma of being jerked to the side by that spell. He shot forward like a rocket, vanishing into the miniature sun before me. I cast the same spell on myself. My feet lurched into my throat, I tumbled head over heals. My body scraped along the ground causing painful cuts to tear open, ripping my robes in several places, not all completely decent. But at least I got within range of Selriona's spell.

Inside was much different than outside. It was not blinding, and it was not opaque. I could still see outside, what looked like a giant red-skinned eredar with wings fast approaching. I glanced around at the assembled people. Almost nobody had made it through. I saw Selriona, Orande, Layalith, Jason and I, and someone else who's name I knew to be Thomas. But there was someone missing. Two someones.

_'Wait!'_ I shouted into the link, not trusting my throat. _'Derek and Anna, we have to wait for - '_

Then the world was light, power, and wind.

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><p>When the stars faded from my vision, we were somewhere completely different than Argus. The air wasn't exactly <em>fresh<em>, but it wasn't choked like it had been on the Burning Legion's homeworld. My vision focused, and I saw the sky, too. Which is saying a lot, because I hadn't seen the sky in over a month. It was a bright, bright blue, the glow of a yellow sun tinting it, the sun itself out of my sight. I twisted onto my stomach, and instantly regretted the motion as my muscles screamed in agony. I wove several heals into my body before my muscles were fit enough to not burst into flames whenever I so much as twitched.

I pulled myself up into a seated position, and looked around.

We were near a beach, but the water was yellow, and the sand black. As the dark beach stretched away, it turned to lime-white rocks, arranged like the scales of a dragon, which stretched as far as I could see. It was on these slabs of white stone that we had arrived. However, everything was tinted with a purple mist that clung to the stones, as well as to my skin and clothes, in a way that no regular fog ever could. Every movement I made, from waving my hand in front of my face to my chest rising and falling with my breaths sent black ripples away. We were in the twilight realm.

I glanced around. Jason was still next to me, unconscious. Thomas, Orande, and Layalith stood in a circle, talking amongst each other, with the paladin weaving healing spells onto the human.

I groaned, then was flattened onto my back when something like a meteor crashed into me. Something rough and wet rubbed itself along my body repeatedly, and I held up my arms, trying to fend it off, stifling a gasp of pain.

"Oh thank the Titans you made it! You're okay you're okay _you're okay!_" _Lick. Lick._ "I was so worried, I thought you weren't going to make it! Oh thank the Titans _thank the Titans!_" _Lick. Lick._

"Get off! Ow! You stupid, stupid dragon!" Her enormous, scaly head pulled away from me. "Blargh!" I exclaimed, wiping my face with my hands, looking up at the twilight dragon.

The capacitor around her neck seemed to be filled with a dull yellow fluid, sloshing about gently, a narrow yellow tendril extending from me into it. Multiple burns and cuts covered her body, there was a sizable gash in her right wing's membrane, and she had several patches where her scales were outright missing, revealing the softer flesh beneath. She didn't seem to notice any of them, though, instead beaming down on me with her tusks retracted, largest smile I'd ever seen on her face. Her fangs were bared, but dragons' fangs were _always_ visible thanks to the structure of their jaw. For a moment her smile vanished and she turned her head to the side, coughing viciously. A few splatters of purple blood appeared on the ground, but when she returned to smiling at me I figured she was fine. If she wasn't, she'd be healing herself.

I shot up to my feet, remembering what I'd said just before she teleported us away. "Wait! We have to go back! For Derek and Anna!" I had no hope Anastasia was alive, she'd likely been swallowed by the horde. But Derek had _Anna_ with him. Sure, she was unconscious, but his daughter had to have counted for _something!_

Selriona's smile evaporated, her voice turned somber. "Amanthe," she began slowly. "We can't go back. They fell behind, and I _told_ you that this is our only chance."

"We can't just leave them behind!" I shouted. "We can't just let him die, can't just _let_ the Legion control her! Send us back! Or just me! I'll rescue her myself!" I felt feverish. It couldn't be. How could our escape plan have gone so wrong? It was all so perfect. And now... I was the only one left of my family. The last one, not just with my family name, but in relations too. Nobody else left...

"Amanthe, think about this!" she retaliated. "The only reason we stood a chance this time was because the Burning Legion wasn't _expecting_ us. We took them off guard, and even then look how bad it went! Thirty of us started out escaping, and only _six_ of us returned! You want us to go back, with them ready for us, with only one fifth as many people for that matter, in the hopes that we might save two people? It can't be done!"

"There has to be some way! Send me back, I can find it! She's my family, damn it! I can't just leave her there!" I didn't even notice I was shouting in Draconic until Selriona responded, lowering her stomach so that her head and eyes were on my level.

"Why? So you can get captured too? Amanthe, I know you're upset! I know what it's like to lose family; you think everyone from my clutches are alive? But there is nothing that can be done. Kil'jaeden himself was there, I couldn't have waited a second longer. How much do you want to bet he's still there? Ten gold? A hundred?"

I looked down, clenching my fists, shadows flickering about them despite my depleted mana pool. "No... she can't be gone," I whispered. Kil'jaeden himself... "They... they can't be gone. They're the only family I have left."

"Amanthe," she said apologetically. "Even if I wanted to, I couldn't. Going to Argus isn't as easy as going away. I teleported us quite a few worlds away thanks to its aura, but going back would take weeks. By then they'll have taken precautions. Increased security a hundred-fold. They weren't expecting a breakout. Now though, they know to keep a close eye on them. We can't get in again." I didn't realize she'd moved behind me until she moved a wing forward, gently pressing me against one of her forelegs as she sat.

I shrugged off her wing. I was dizzy. The world was spinning. Too fast, too fast. The last one... can't rescue... no hope. Suddenly I started to feel bitter. My only family, doomed to either death or demonic brainwashing! As good as _dead!_ While meanwhile Selriona had dozens of surviving children, some of which had their own broods. Why should she have that? Why not me!?

"No," I choked out. "It can't be..." I looked up towards the sky, using mana that wasn't there to look for a trail of arcane power. I looked for the method Selriona had used. Surely it had to be somewhere. It had to... I had to try. I had to. I _had_ to.

"Amanthe," she said with a note of steel in her voice, no doubt sensing my efforts. "Let it go. We still have the return trip ahead of us. It's a miracle we rescued three people, even more so that you were one. When you tripped, I thought I'd never see you again. Please, Amanthe..."

"My only family. My family's all gone." My mother's smiling face, blue eyes framed with gold hair, the day before Lordaeron fell. My father's face was blurred, I'd seen so little of him. All I recalled were slightly pointed ears and gray eyes. Samuel with his absurd face-framing hairstyle and gray eyes, pranking me by turning me into a sheep, then when I bit him, a snail.

"Amanthe, you _have _a family. At Grim Batol, with our Flight. Come on, let's just go back." Her wing wrapped itself around me and pulled me back to her, and I didn't fight it. Was our escape attempt so ill-fated? So unachievable?

She was right, wasn't she? I'd left humanity behind over a century ago. I'd placed myself with the Twilight Dragonflight for the rest of my life, however long that may be. My place was with the dragons. Selriona, cackling mischievously from a mountain roost as she 'accidentally' scared off my hunt. Ialion, while he was still a whelpling, toxic green eyes jerking back and forth as he got his first taste of coffee.

"Right," I muttered. "Let's go back. It's been a month. We've... got to tell them. We have to stop them. Organize... something." My family, gone...

"Amanthe," she said sternly, making me look up at her. "I'll find a way to make it up to you, alright? I promise. It's the least I can do, for all you've done for me, all you will..."

"Will?" I asked.

She shook her head. "Nevermind that. Nalestrasza must be messing with my head." It was a gossamer attempt at an excuse, but I let it slide. "I'll make it up to you, I swear on Aman'thul's name I will. But let's just go back, alright?"

I nodded, ignoring the stinging in my eyes. "Right. Let's go back."

"But not yet. I don't have any mana, and we left all our food and drink on Argus. We're still too far for a proper portal, so we're gonna be a day, maybe more. Get some rest. You squishy human."

"Squishy yourself," I muttered, sitting down. Selriona shifted behind me, her bulk moving around until her stomach rested on the ground and her wings formed a cocoon around her. I rested against her flank, its gentle rising and falling soothing my tattered nerves. "You big sack of scales..." I was tired. I'd run nonstop for gods-know how long, fighting off an army of demons at the same time nonetheless. It didn't take long for my eyes to slam shut, the world fading to black.

* * *

><p><strong>Oh holy fuck. I don't think I've ever been hit with writer's block like THAT before. It's just the worst. But I'm back now, finally. About time. <strong>

**Review, let me know what you think. They really help me grow as a writer and know what you do and don't like in terms of prose, so I can correct it. It's a win-win :-)**


	30. Chapter 30:Relieved Mate

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Huge thanks to my beta dharak for catching those embarassing mistakes**

**Chapter published 12/27/12, I hope you've all had lovely holidays!**

* * *

><p><span>Amanthe<span>

It only took us one day to return to Stormwind.

After we rested, got our mana and breaths back, Selriona teleported us back towards Azeroth within an hour. Despite my insistence that she needed to rest, having coughed up _blood_, she didn't accept 'waiting' for an answer. My healing didn't do anything to help her, either. All the same, the Legion was still tracking us down. This became all to evident when red mist began to consume our location. After that, it didn't take long for us to get going.

The shear devastation wrought by the Burning Legion on those worlds... it was horrifying. Entire worlds brought down to their knees, ravaged, transformed into desolate wastelands. It didn't exactly make me feel good about the future of Azeroth. After all, how can anyone fight against an army that can do _that?_

Still, what choice did we have? We'd succeeded, at least partially, in interfering with the Legion's plan. At the very least, they would be slowed down. We had vital information to pass on, and pass on it would be.

Arcane light flashed before me, then faded away. Cold air wrapped around me, forcing me to hug myself. I looked around. "Where are we?"

Jason looked my way. "I'm not sure. It's cold as Northrend, but there are no auroras."

"It's the northern end of Tirisfal," Selriona said from beside us. "I figured it would be a good spot for us to come up with a plan for the next steps. After all, this knowledge is _kind of_ important."_  
><em>

The knowledge that cost my only living relatives their lives. "Right, so. There are six of us. Selriona and I have to go back to Grim Batol to tell the Aspect, of course. But what are we going to do with, well." I motioned to Jason, and then to Thomas. "You two? I mean, if you just show up over a month after vanishing off the face of Azeroth, with traces of Burning Legion magic lingering around the scene of the crime, the Cathedral of Light will ask questions."

Thomas and Jason shared a look, before the latter spoke. "We can only give them part of the truth. Say that we escaped on our own, but only the two of us returned." He frowned, then approached me. "Or, three of us?"

I shook my head. "No, bad idea. I need to go with Selriona back to Grim Batol. I _am_ the oldest member of our Flight, mortal or not. I have to be there, and if you mention three of us escaping, they'll wonder about the third one. No, just say that you two alone escaped."

"Alright," Thomas began skeptically, brown eyes flicking between Selriona and I. "But what are we supposed to tell them of their plan? After all, there's not a whole lot we know. We'll say they told us about the magic amplifier, and that they plan to use it with us... somehow."

"Then tell them that," I said. "Hopefully the authorities in Stormwind can make more sense out of this than we can." I looked up at my patron. "What about the Horde? I think they should be told too." Thomas and Jason both frowned when I said this, but held their tongues. This was the business of a Dragonflight, and they knew it. This was our charge. _My_ charge.

Selriona inclined her head and switched to Orcish. "I don't think that would be a very good idea. After all, what would Layalith tell them? 'Oh, I went to go help rescue some Alliance spell-casters.'. They'd never believe that. Either that, or they'd kill her and then ignore what happened." Layalith paled when the twilight dragon mentioned her dying. "The other alternative would be her revealing _us_, and for that plan I'd have to run it by Verthelion first. But Orande, think you can tell your guild about what's going on? They already know about us, and this is _very_ important."

She saluted, but spoke in a belligerent tone. "Of course, dragon."

Suddenly, Layalith said something in Thalassian, likely less than civil. "My sister. Damn it, I told her this would take a month, and it's been how long? Month and a half? She's going to be worried sick! I've got to get back as soon as possible."

Selriona nodded. "Alright. But understand that once our Flight comes up with a plan on where to proceed from here, I'll likely be seeing you again. Until then, try to keep it to yourself as much as possible. We may decide that telling the Horde may forestall an alliance with the... well, the Alliance. And in the face of the Burning Legion, the two of _you_," she firmly stated, pointing between the men and the blood elf. "Bickering like whelps over a carcass will _not_ help us at all." She sat on her haunches, wings cocooned against her back, and looked down at me. "I think that covers all our business here, Amanthe." She opened her jaws and fired a bolt of arcane energy onto the ground, where it became a rippling, shimmering portal to the city of Silvermoon.

Before Layalith could go in, I stopped her. "Hey," I said. "Thank you for coming for me. You didn't have to do that."

She stiffened, then relaxed. "After helping me with the Hammer in Orgrimmar, I owed it to you. We're even now. Don't expect any more favors."

My dragon friend chimed in. "I need to thank you too, Layalith. This was a suicide mission, and you still came. For a mortal, you're pretty noble."

_'And I'm not?'_ I asked. My response was a mental apology.

"We ever see each other again, I am in your debt. Goodbye, Layalith," she finished.

She snorted. "Farewell." With that, she walked through the portal, which vanished behind her. Selriona then created a portal to Stormwind. Thomas and Orande went through quick, but I stopped Jason.

"Hey," I murmured. "Stay safe, alright Jason?"

He closed the small distance between us and wrapped his arms around me. I returned the hug. "Alright, I will. Think I'll see you again?"

I glanced back at Selriona, who was watching the exchange curiously. I looked back at Jason and pulled away, playfully slapping his shoulders. "I don't doubt it. But you know. Dragonflight business. Important stuff, end of all things." I gave him a warm smile.

He returned it, albeit a little sadly. "Alright." He brightened. "And don't forget, you're _still_ my student for the art of Discipline." He leaned over and gave me a kiss on the cheek, which I returned, my head buzzing wildly out of control as I did. We pulled away, blood rushing to my head. He walked over to the portal, turned around and mouthed one more 'bye' to me, before stepping inside. The portal shuddered and closed. I shivered as a chill breeze swept through the air, and then Selriona was next to me, wings raised.

"Jason's his name, right? Is he your mate?"

I sputtered, face blazing red. "W-what? NO! Just - have you learned nothing about mortals? Have some tact, Selriona!" Although I did have to admit he was handsome...

"Alright, alright!" she said shamefully. "Sorry I asked. Anyway, you ready?" She lowered her head and coughed violently. I politely waited until she was done.

"Ready. Our Flight needs to know this. Open up the portal, and let's get on with it." A twinge of despair crested over me, but didn't last long. It had only taken one day for the depression of losing my family to turn into a burning desire for _vengeance_ on the Legion. And what better way to get revenge than to stick a wheel in their plans, and blow them up?

A whoosh of air next to me signaled her transformation. "Yeah. I've had enough teleporting for centuries." She held one hand up, silvery-purple arcane orbs in both her palms. She cast the spell for five seconds before completing it, and the air before us warped, expanded, and imploded, forming the gateway to a vast underground city. We stepped through.

* * *

><p><span>Selriona<span>

I'd missed this place.

The sprawling labyrinths of stone, the fountains of lava, the dragonspawn patrolling, drakonids guarding, dragons and drakes speaking with one another during flight, perching on ledges, on corridors, the sound of chirping whelps from down below. The ever-present pressure on my head signaling the nearby Red dragons at the Vermilion Redoubt, the scent of my Flight filling the still walls of Grim Batol, giving it _purpose _after so many years of being contested over. That's not to say there were not problems. The valley our home overlooked was a common trade route for mortals, and there had been occasions where mortals came to try and settle the 'unclaimed' territory of Grim Batol and we had to, using disguises, gently nudge them away.

But this was home. However migratory dragons are in nature, Grim Batol is my _home. _One place I know that, no matter what happens, I can always return to and be safe. Our arrival caused quite a stir, making the drakes around our arrival look confused for a moment, before dropping to their forelegs in respect. That made me feel a little uncomfortable, but not as much as it would've in the past. These were the newer generation, the ones that never had to know the Cataclysm, never had the other Flights as a foe. Instead, they could live free of that burden, and share the struggle against the Old Gods with _everyone_, not just our own Flight. Our numbers were stable too, past the fourteen hundred after Neltharion's war, now hovering around ten thousand. Not quite the twenty-five thousand the other Flights boasted in times of peace, and indeed many of them were recovering as well. And the Blue Flight had been driven so close to the brink of extinction...

I looked down at the drakes. "What have I missed?" I asked.

One of them looked up, followed by the rest of them. "We've thought, for the past week, that you were dead. We've pinpointed the Old God Er'roshajr to have his head somewhere beneath Zul'Gurub." He paused to look over at Amanthe, and nod. "Eldest." She nodded back, and the drake returned to craning his neck to look up at me. "We thought you had perished on your mission to Argus."

A female beside him nodded. "Yeah, after what we were told, well... we waited a few days once the month had passed, but after a week, we gave up hope. I hope you don't hold it against us. Do you, Prime Consort?"

I struggled to hold in a cough, but it burst out anyway. Once I was done, I replied to her. "Of course not. Do you know where the Aspect is? I need to speak to him of what I learned on Argus concerning the Legion. That, and he should know I'm alive." Guilt twisted in my heart. I'd let Verthelion think I was dead once before, long ago when we were still hunted, still hated by the world at large. I owed it to him to relieve his stress. I looked over to Amanthe, who seemed to be growing more and more impatient by the moment. "Amanthe, help Goriona here spread the word about what's happened on Argus. You know it better than I do. I'm going to go to Verthelion, meet me in his chamber when you're done to make sure I'm telling the story right."

She nodded. "Yeah, I'll go do that." She turned to the drakes. "First stop is the roost over on the northwest side. Lowest levels first, we'll work our way up." She walked over to the male, who dutifully lowered to the ground and let her climb on. After all, this was _important._ They took off right away, but not before she sent me a message through our link. _'And go to the infirmary, for the love of the Titans! You're coughing your lungs out.'_

I rolled my eyes, already in the air. _'Yes, broodmother.' _Still, it was a good idea. The clouds on Argus were made of the constant spewing of Titans-know how many volcanoes, and I'd taken a good few whiffs of that. Volcanic ash in my lungs would probably end up doing a lot of harm if I let it sit there. I stopped moving and hovered over a lava pit, another fit of coughing taking me. This one was brutal and made my lungs ache, my throat catch fire, and a small glob of purple blood rained down into the magma below. Yeah, get that checked out, good idea.

Verthelion's chambers were easy to find. He'd elected to stay in the chamber that Alexstrasza had been held in during her darkest years. It was the same chamber where a Faceless general had stayed during the Cataclysm, along with several dozen Red and Twilight eggs. The Kingslayers had long since killed the general by the time our Flight claimed Grim Batol , and we'd sorted the eggs out to their correct destinations, so now Verthelion took it as his private chambers.

It wasn't the biggest chamber, but it was certainly up there, and it was also easy to access, in case anything important needed to be brought to his attention, and the narrow corridor leading into it also made it easy to block off in case he wanted privacy. As I ran through in the form of a blood elf, I noticed that there was _not_ an impassable wall of shadow energy, so I ran through and shifted back.

Verthelion had his tail to me, laying on his stomach. He was twice my size, thanks to the Heart of Twilight, with tealish-indigo scales instead of purple ones like mine, typical for males. His large, leathery wings were extended to their full length, flopped limply out on the ground. His tail was still, and he stared off into the distance.

Guilt twisted in my heart, but I had to speak up. "Verthelion?" I asked, closing the distance between us. "I'm not dead."

Slowly but surely, he got up, pulling his wings off the ground. He got to his paws and looked back at me, glowing purple eyes wide. "Selriona?" I nodded. He laughed and bounded over to me, knocking me down with his bulk to where he had me pinned with one paw on my underbelly. I stiffened in fear for a moment, but relaxed when he leaned down and nuzzled me. "I thought you, we all thought, it's been - "

"I know, I know!" I croaked out. "Please, get off of me!" He did so, and I rolled over, coughing violently. He'd upset my lungs with that, and they were _letting me know. _"Really, you all took me for dead that quick? A few days is all it takes for you to give up on me?" I shoved him in the flank with a wing. "I'm hurt, Verthelion. Deeply."

He looked away sheepishly. "I know, I know. It's just, you went to _Argus._ We were worried. What could have possibly possessed you to go there? You could have at least let more of us come with you, like _me_. You went into the heart of the Burning Legion's war machine you, you... you suicidal _moron!_"

It was my turn to look away in embarrassment. "Sorry! Sorry. But I didn't have the time, I couldn't risk it. As it was, I barely got there in time. They were about to try and escape themselves. If I'd stopped to wait for more help, well... things wouldn't have ended well."

He sighed. "Well, at least you got lucky and - for the love of the Titans _don't do that again!_ At least tell me your mission succeeded?"

I wagged my tail along the ground, scraping the spiked club on the stone. "Well, kinda. Out of the twenty five that were taken, we managed to free three of them. Amanthe was one of them, but," I licked my fangs, throat suddenly dry. "She lost her entire family. Titans, how am I going to make that up to her?"

He snapped his head over to me. "We can worry about that later. What was this about people being taken? What was happening? Ialion didn't give that many details."

"As far as I understand it, the Burning Legion attempted to invade Silvermoon City and kidnap some of the blood elves there. One of our drakes stopped it, so they gave up. Not long after, they made an attempt at Stormwind, where Amanthe was and Pallasion's Dragonsworn is. This time they didn't fail, so she and several others were kidnapped to Argus. At the same time the demons stole one of Amanthe's relatives, a whelp by the name of Anna. She's extremely talented in the Light, probably more than anybody else in history." I hung my head. "She didn't make it out. She's still on Argus."

He sighed. "That's just wonderful. Any ideas why?"

"Well, my guess is that they're planning to use the twenty-two people left to power up that magic-amplifier they got a few decades ago. Remember that?" He nodded, and I continued. "For _what_, I don't have a clue. Nalestrasza has some ideas, but without hard facts that's all they are, ideas. Amanthe will be able to tell us more." I leaned down and coughed some more. "She's going around, telling everyone I'm back. I told her to come back afterwards so she can fill in any holes in my side of the story."

He nodded. "Right, right. Good idea, the more people she tells the faster the news will spread." I lowered my head and practically coughed my lungs out. "What's wrong?"

I groaned. "Argus's clouds are made of volcano smoke. Nasty stuff. Got most of it out of me, but it's really irritating my lungs." I began again, more blood splattering out.

Verthelion jumped backwards, tusks unsheathing and wings flaring out to their impressive maximum extent. "Irritating?! You're coughing up blood!"

"It'll get better," I croaked.

"Seems to me it's getting worse and worse. Selriona, _go._ Go to the infirmary, have the dragonspawn there look at you. You have the link with your mortal, so you'll still be able to talk during the meeting."

"Meeting?" I asked.

He nodded. "Selriona, you're the first dragon, first person from Azeroth ever to set paw on Argus. Combined with all that's going on, yes, there's going to be a meeting. The other Consorts, General Vajarn, Amanthe, others once I can think of them. Find out what to do from here, and _then_ I'll make the call."

"I'm fine, really." I bent a wing over and coughed into it. "It's nothing."

His eyes hardened. "Nothing!? I just spent the past four days under the belief that you _died._ I am not going to let something so easily curable kill you _again._ Selriona, go. The world won't end just because you don't personally attend this talk."

I relented. Coughing up blood_ was_ a bad thing, but this was so much more important. Still... "Alright." I nodded. "I'll go. Bye, Verthelion."

He dipped his head, tusks sliding back into his head. "Bye, Selriona." I began to turn out of his chambers when he stopped me. "Hey." I looked back. "Relax. We can get this under control."

I smiled. "Who are you trying to reassure?"

He might've rolled his eyes, but with no pupil it's hard to tell. "Yeah yeah. Relax, go to the infirmary. Get healed, and the meantime we'll have this meeting..."

* * *

><p><span>Verthelion<span>

"... of the Aspects will come to order. Once Kalecgos arrives." Alexstrasza turned her ember-bright gaze onto me, a smile tugging at the corner of her elven form's lips. "If he ever does."

"He's never on time," I muttered to myself. "Feels like he's avoiding me." A breeze rustled the flowers around us, but didn't penetrate inside my smooth shadow barrier. I looked around the location we'd chosen to have our meeting in.

Hyjal was quite nice this time of year, so we had selected a region higher up, overlooking the night elf village sprawled along the World Tree's roots, for the view. Even from so far up, I could make out tiny mortals moving around down there, aware that the Dragon Aspects gathered nearby, but none coming to watch out of respect. Just as well. This was meant for our ear-plates alone.

The clearing wasn't so much a clearing so much as a portion in the more mountainous regions of Hyjal that plateaued, forming a flat surface that jutted out like a sore claw. It was filled with a soft grass that swayed gently in the breeze, with multicolored flowers sprouting around Alexstrasza's feet, where the grass was much greener than elsewhere. _Especially_ greener than around me, where it dulled, a slight yellowish tint filling the fibers of plant life.

We weren't cramped, for the area was very large. Large enough to hold two Aspects in their true forms comfortable. We stood in ring, Alexstrasza nearly straight across from me.

After deciding upon a plan of action in Grim Batol, it was her I'd gone to, saying I had very important information for all the Aspects to hear regarding the fate of Azeroth. Needless to say, my Queen had quickly sent missives for the other Aspects, and we had gathered here on Hyjal.

Next to her, Ysera looked up. "Perhaps he is. His Flight carries the most grievous wounds from... then." I couldn't help but flinch. Right, those times. Couldn't be around the other Flights without being reminded of them. "But it is not like him to be late out of spite. He's late out of having a poor sense of time."

Beside her, Nozdormu snorted, smoothing out the robes on his legs. He said they were made of a substance called 'plastic'. It was yet to be invented, but it looked very uncomfortable. Still, who was I to judge? "Unforgivable. I take that as a personal insult." Still, the Aspect of Time cracked a smile. "He should be here any moment."

I rolled my eyes. "Isn't that wonderfully vague."

"It is my business to be vague."

"And in that, you have no equal Nozdormu," I reassured him.

After a few minutes, the Blue Aspect did show up, his massive wingspan casting a shadow over us as we turned to look up at him. His wings extended down his tail, giving them a bat-like appearance, even as he landed and folded them against his side, before contracting into a blue-haired half elf with shining blue eyes. He curtsied to Alexstrasza. "My queen." Then to Ysera. He bowed to Nozdormu, and nodded to me. I returned the nod. It was only normal. The two of us were _young _Aspects. The other three demanded respect, the two of us? We did, but not quite as much. And even though Kalecgos and I were roughly equal in our times as Aspect, he was still considerably _older_ than me by a few thousand years. Being the 'little' Aspect... is awkward. Though they _do_ do their best not to bring it up.

"Welcome, Kalecgos," the Life-binder greeted. Her smile returned. "We were wondering if you were ever going to show up."

"I wasn't wondering," chimed in the Timeless one.

He looked down sheepishly. "Well, the point is that we're all here." He looked my way, and I couldn't ignore the chilly hint in his glowing eyes, having nothing to do with his inhatched power. "Verthelion, what is the point of your protections?"

I shrugged, running a hand along the inside of my shield. "I'd rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it. If anyone were to take us by surprise, things could, to use a mortal saying, go south very fast. Something like that happened in the past, I believe. On Hyjal as a matter of fact."

Ysera looked vaguely uncomfortable at that mention of the incident with Go'el and the elements, the Dreamer shifting her weight onto her left foot, then right. "Perhaps you are right, but that is not why you have summoned us here. What have you and your Flight discovered?"

Right, right. The Legion's plan, as far as we knew it. I'd had the meeting, and we decided on several things. One of which was that the threat of this turn of events warranted telling all the other Flights. I took a deep breath. "For the past century, my Flight has been, among other things, keeping a note on the Legion's motions and plans, interfering with them whenever we can. Recently, my Prime Consort and her Dragonsworn have uncovered a plan of the Burning Legion's that veers off the beaten path by a notable margin, and demands to be brought to all our attentions."

This drew Kalecgos's interest. "The Burning Legion is doing something different? Explain yourself."

"Eighty years ago, the Burning Legion acquired possession of a device that could absorb and amplify blasts of magic, particularly potent with the Holy Light. Once that occurred, I placed the members of my Flight on high alert for the Burning Legion. My fears appear to have been well placed, since now they have infiltrated Stormwind with mortal agents. These agents kidnapped two dozen priests and paladins, and a mortal whelp with unprecedented control over the Holy Light."

Alexstrasza frowned, but it was Nozdormu who spoke. "Yes, the captured mortals. To be used in conjunction with the amplifier to - " He stopped himself just in time. Normally Nozdormu had no trouble keeping himself from giving the future away. Was this version of him slipping? What could even cause him to slip? I briefly sunk partway into the twilight realm to confirm my fears, but to my relief, the place Nozdormu occupied was free of all corruption.

"Yes, thank you. To be used in conjunction with the amplifier, for certain, but for what _most of us_ don't know."

Kalecgos groaned. "Must you tease us so?" He turned to me. "What happened to the mortals? Where were they taken?"

"Argus. They were taken to Argus. Luckily, my Prime Consort's Dragonsworn was among them, so she used their telepathic link to send a call for help. For some reason that is _beyond_ me, she went after her without informing us, doing little more than having our watcher on the far side of the Dark Portal come tell us. By then, it was too late for us to go after her. She used the trail left by the Naaru and the Draenei to reach Argus, along with a few mortal recruits."

"Mortal recruits?" my Queen asked.

"Yes. A blood elf that owed her Dragonsworn a favor. The parents of the whelp that wields the Light expertly, and a demon hunter from within the ranks of the Liberality Confederacy. Long and short, they managed to reach Argus. The demons were unprepared. Cocky, arrogant, taken by surprise. At the same time their captives planned an escape, and the two parties met up. Even so, of the twenty-five that were kidnapped, only three got out, the Dragonsworn among them. The others, we assume, are still on Argus, on even tighter lock-down."

"It sounds like the mission was a catastrophe, then," Ysera commented. Everyone's faces had grown tight, taking in the information.

"Not completely. There's more. The Burning Legion told their captives what they wanted from them. According to the Dragonsworn, they were kept in a comfortable complex, given housing, food, and water. They demons largely left them alone, except for taking one of them to be broken, to send them a message. Otherwise, they were to be left alone. They'd grow up, have children, and here's where things stop making sense. They were to raise their offspring with the view that the Burning Legion is the highest _good._ So that their descendants could pass on the same message, and so on, and so on. The problem is, _why? _The only real hint is that the captives were given books that the Legion also no doubt stole, teaching a variety of Holy spells from smiting to resurrection to shackles."

_This_ really got the Blue Aspect's attention. "A book of Holy spells? For the Legion? Why? What use could they have with brainwashed users of the Light?"

"Well, they'll use them in combination with this amplifier. How big is said amplifier, by the way?" asked Alexstrasza. I held my hands apart, signaling something that I could easily hold in two hands.

"From what I've been told, it is very powerful. A simple smite placed into releases a blast that can collapse stone roofs. It's anyone's guess as to what the Legion will use it for."

A tense silence settled on us as the other four Aspects pondered the information I'd delivered. I wandered my gaze across them. Alexstrasza was fiddling her armored hands, the claws for fingers scraping against each other. Ysera's multicolored eyes flickered a variety of colors, making it hard to focus on them without getting a headache. I wringed my hands together, trying once again, with no success, to comprehend what the demons' plan was. To my right, Nozdormu was as unreadable as ever. Of course, he already _knew_ what they were going to do. But he couldn't tell us, now could he? No, that would upset the timeline. I forced my bitterness under check. I had no idea how time worked. Telling us could mean more trouble; perhaps not knowing their plan makes us assume it's worse than it really is and over-prepare.

To my left, Kalecgos fit the mold of unease the rest of us harbored. The Aspect of Magic's luminescent eyes were mainly fixed on me, periodically flicking across the other Aspects, then back to me, then to his hands. My eyes focused on the World Tree behind him, and I allowed a small smile to creep onto my face. The tree, battered and beaten so many times in the past, now stood tall and proud, the scars of the past healed. Vines coiled around its roots, which plunged into the magically charged pool beneath it. It had lost its blessings, long ago, when it was sacrificed to kill Archimonde. After our Flight had been accepted into the fold of Wyrmrest, we'd given our blessings to it once more.

Many of the blessings were the same. Alexstrasza's blessing ensured that, so long as the tree still stood, life on Azeroth would never end. Ysera bound it once again to the Emerald tree, so that it could allow druidic people to enter her realm. Nozdormu restored the night elves' immortality. The Spellweaver's blessing to the World Tree was to divert some of the world's ley-lines to converge beneath it. This resulted in incredible amounts of power being added to the Well of Eternity, which in turn fed Nordrassil, strengthening the blessings of the other Aspects, including mine. My own blessing, I was quite proud of. Selriona had helped me perfect the magic for weeks, ensuring that it would be _just right. _After I cast my blessing on the World Tree, the Old Gods could never escape their prisons so long as the tree still stood. They could gain strength, they could send their minions, but they could never break free of their chains to take matters into their own tentacles. It was suitable revenge for the trick they had pulled on us before even hatching.

Finally, the Aspect of Dreams spoke up. "This is most disturbing. The Legion is attempting to broaden their arsenal of weaponry."

"That's not all. They're being very, very subtle about this. They're doing everything covertly. Manipulating the Twilight's Hammer, using mortal couriers, they don't want to be caught. It's a miracle that we even know of this plan in the first place. If my Prime Consort's Dragonsworn had been elsewhere, we may be completely oblivious to this plot. But why are they so... careful?"

"It's not surprising, when you look at their history," Nozdormu began. "We are, to our knowledge, the only world that has ever resisted their assaults. During the War of the Ancients, they nearly won, but we beat them. Something they are very unaccustomed to experiencing. They came close to their goal with Hyjal, but even with the destruction of the World Tree we would've stood a chance. Their second invasion also failed. And, thanks to the Liberality Confederacy, they were utterly crushed when they attempted to use the Sunwell. Their strategy of simply surging their armies across the world have not been working; they know we can defeat them. Not only can we defeat them we are _adept_ at defeating them. They need a new plan, they need to take us by surprise."

"Thanks to Verthelion's Flight, that will not work for them," Kalecgos admitted. "We know they are up to something. What would happen if all five of us went to Argus, using the same method your Prime Consort did, and freed the captives?"

I pondered this. "We'd probably succeed, but all we'd do is slow them down. They'd kidnap others, and the risk of going to Argus _again_ is just too great. Amanthe, the Dragonsworn, says that they were lucky the Legion hadn't planned for outside intervention. They will now, and it will be nigh impossible, even for us, to perform a rescue. We would not even know where to look for them."

Alexstrasza sighed. "This is unsettling news, but necessary. We know what has happened, we must now decide on what to do." She turned her fiery gaze on me, her expression softening. "I thank you, Verthelion, for delivering this information to us. I can see clearly we did not make a mistake." Something in me twisted. It wasn't uncomfortable, but not exactly welcome either. "I fear that if we make it clear that we know of what the Burning Legion intends, they shall slow down their plots and wait until we are once again unassuming of the danger they pose. We must pretend we know nothing," she said, slicing the air sideways with an arm. "That we forgot about this kidnapping."

"A wise choice, sister. However, there is not much we can do beyond observing the Legion's movements. How far spread is your Flight?" she asked, turning to me.

I spread out my arms. "We're in the Horde, we're in the Argent Crusade. We're in Northrend, and we're in Pandaria. Our eyes and ear-plates are everywhere," I said. "All the information gathered, I collect in a series of tomes in Grim Batol to create a complete picture of corruption on Azeroth. Hardly anything done by those wishing our demise goes un-monitored."

She nodded. "Excellent, we will need all the information on the Legion we can get. Will the Twilight's Hammer be any issue?"

I sighed. "We're hunting them down fervently. We've got a grudge with them, you understand. But the closer we come to wiping them out, the further we drive them into hiding. Perhaps I'll relax our attacks on them, lull them into a sense of security. However, they are nothing without the Old Gods. We take _them_ out, and they'll be left in the dark, unable to find a direction."

"We find Er'roshajr," Nozdormu began. "Kill it, then find the final Old God. We can not kill them, lest we bring about an end to Azeroth, but we can limit its influence. We can cripple the Hammer. The Horde and the Alliance have nearly worn themselves out fighting, so once they do we will need to help bring about a lasting peace. Let them rebuild their military. We'll need their aid for the coming storm."

"My Flight is already on high alert for the Burning Legion's machinations," I told them. "Short of actively going after them, there's little we can do. And doing _that_ would certainly alert them that they've been revealed."

"Still," the Lifebinder said with a tilt and nod of her head. "It is important to know. I fear we shall have to prepare for war."

"The Legion will invade again," Ysera warned. "And again, and again, forever. We can not hold out against them indefinitely. There must be a way to end them permanently."

I sighed. "That'll be tricky. Anytime we kill a demon, it just returns to the Twisting Nether and then comes back later. Without a way to permanently kill them..."

All eyes turned to Kalecgos, who nodded in acknowledgement of the silent question. "Demonic banishment _can_ be done, but it requires very specific substances, which few if any know of. I shall endeavor to locate these artifacts so that any demons that die in the coming war _actually _perish."

"I am afraid there is not much my Flight can do. We are engaged with the Infinite in every angle, every timeline. However, when the time comes, we shall lend what aid we can."

I locked eyes with Alexstrasza and Ysera. The latter of the two spoke. "We shall continue to pin down Er'roshajr, and then enlist the aid of the Kingslayers to finish him. However, the Old God has had a lot of time to recover his strength. We will likely have to take matters into our own claws."

I shrugged. "I'm not worried about that. Worst comes to worst, I'll pull us into the twilight realm and we'll retreat. But what comes after?"

"What have you decided? Before coming here, certainly you had a gathering with your advisers," the Red Aspect inquired.

"I have. We've decided that we will reveal ourselves to the mortal world. Hiding is getting harder and harder, and there is less and less reason to. The Liberality Confederacy already knows, and when the time comes for us to aid in defending the world from the Legion, it will be helpful for them to know we are on their side."

"Are you certain?" Kalecgos asked. "The humans, orcs, who live short lives will be easy to persuade. The draenei, night elves, and others will still remember."

I nodded. "It's better to do so now, than give a rushed explanation while demonic armies march across the land."

"Very well then," Alexstrasza said. "We have a plan then, yes? Ysera, Verthelion and I shall continue our attempts to slay the fourth Old God, after which he shall reveal his Flight to the mortal world. Kalecgos's Flight shall search for items that can provide permanent demonic banishment, and Nozdormu." She turned to him, gaze and voice softening. "Are you certain you do not wish our aid with the Infinite Flight? You make it sound like you are fighting a losing battle, brother."

Despite being immortal, Nozdormu seemed to triple in age. "In one way it is a losing battle, and yet in another it is not. Many of my Flight fall to the Infinite, but scattered throughout time. We are, by nature, unable to lose. Sadly, since they share a nature with us, the Infinite are also unable to be truly defeated. It is a stalemate for eternity, but you shall not experience it. Of that, you can be assured."

"You're really slipping today," I cautioned him. "Should you be telling us all this?"

He shook his head. "I - no. It makes no difference. It does not matter, my Flight _will_ aid in the protection of this world, as we always have."

"Is there anything left we can do with the information at hand?" Kalecgos asked.

"I don't think there is," I said. "All we know is that the Legion is planning something horrific for us, and it involves using the Light. The Twilight Dragonflight will keep a close eye on the Burning Legion, however. Remember, anything we learn is in the Records in Grim Batol, and you are welcome at any time to come and browse through them."

The other Aspects nodded, and my queen looked down briefly, then back up. "Then this meeting of the Aspects is adjourned. Farewell, my friends. May the Titans watch over you." We returned the blessing, and she placed her hands together, weaving arcane energy together. We each tossed our own goodbyes around, and then, one by one, we started to teleport away.

When I reappeared in Grim Batol, clenching my fists, I returned to my true form. I stretched my wings and swung my tail back and forth a few times. Pallasion was there, and leaped back, startled, nearly trampling the troll shaman besides him. He relaxed upon noticing it was me.

"So?" my friend inquired. "How did the meeting go?"

I sighed. "We've got a lot to do."

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><p><strong>I know you're reading this, I can check my profile for that :-) At least 34 of you. Seriously, please review, let me know what you think. It doesn't have to be anything elaborate, just a quick piece of what you feel.<strong>


	31. Chapter 31:Them Again

******Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Thanks to my beta dharak for catching those errors! Without further ado, section 4.**

**Chapter published 1/12/13**

* * *

><p><strong>Section 4:I'm Back<strong>

217 years, two days, eighteen hours, forty-two minutes, eleven seconds after the epilogue of Coup de What?

Amanthe

I walked through the empty wasteland, a giant twilight dragon by my side as we passed through silently. A faint white scar ran down the right side of her back, from when she fought one of her siblings as whelplings. The right wing also had a spot of thin webbing, where a Red wyrm had blasted her with a fireball during her drake years.

"You sure it's here?" I asked in Draconic.

"Certain," Selriona said. "Whatever's happening, it's happening here."

"Alright, but when?" I asked.

She sat down on her haunches, wings folded against her back. She swung her tail, the club _scratching_ at the smooth gray ground with an aggravating screech. "That's a good question. I guess we just wait."

"Yeah. Any idea how long we'll have to wait?" The moment I said that, an earthquake split the world. I stumbled, and Selriona flared out her wings, getting back on all fours. The shaking intensified, along with the deep groaning of shaking earth. "I just had to open my mouth!" Cracks split across the earth, snaking out like cracked glass. One split the ground right beneath me, forcing me into a partial split.

"Amanthe!" I turned my head over to Selriona, who had taken flight to stay above the havoc. She started towards me, forelegs outstretched to pick me up. A moment later the ground _heaved_ again. The crack widened and a heartbeat later my stomach was in my throat. The crevasse was narrow and jagged, made of black stone with the faint light of _lava_ coming from far, far beneath.

I think I screamed, but I couldn't hear myself over the rushing of wind, the flapping of wings and the panicked roar from above. I flailed about like a headless chicken, trying in vain to right myself as the pool of magma grew closer and closer. Then, my spinning brought my head over a small ledge, and I cracked my head against the hard stone, blackness flooding my vision in an instant.

I was in a chapel. The domed, painted roof stretched far above me, covered in the pictures of various heroes of the Light. Uther, Tirion, Anduin. I heard a vague echo of someone's voice. _'Amanthe, take a vacation. You deserve it so much. After what happened on Argus...'._ The benches behind us were not especially full, but Jason's family was here. I could feel Selriona's violet eyes on me, curious. The priest before us looked to Jason, who spoke. "I do."

I opened my eyes, awash with heat. "Hey, hey," Selriona said reassuringly from behind me. "Take it easy. That's a nasty lump on your head."

I sat up, looking behind me to her, then around. My head buzzed, and the air around me was hot and dry. Further inspection revealed the cause. Selriona's human form and I were both at the bottom of the chasm I'd fallen into. We'd landed on a small stretch of black stone surrounded by lava in all directions. It formed a little peninsula, jutting out into the lake of molten rock. Orange vapor rose up from the surrounding liquid, up into the starless sky.

"What happened? I remember hitting that rock, and... how did I survive that?"

"Don't you remember? You placed a shield around yourself. Must've absorbed some of the impact."

I nodded. Right, that had to be it. Nothing else would explain my survival. "But then, the fall - "

She smiled. "I got to you in time." She stood, looking up. "The gap's too narrow. Can't fly out. And this _is_ what we were waiting for." I stood, and instantly fell back down when my head swam, little buzzing, be-tentacled insects flickering in and out of my vision. "Whoa, whoa. Take it easy, Amanthe. Just wait here, alright? I'll go check out the path."

"What path?"

She pointed over towards the wall our peninsula jutted out from. "That path." Sure enough, there in the wall was a narrow crack. A narrow stream flowed from it, trickling into the water where it turned to steam and rose out of the crack in the earth we were trapped in. She started towards it, smoothing out her violet robes. "Stay here, alright? If anything happens, let me know through the link."

"Wait!" I shouted, but by then she'd already vanished into the path, leaving me alone. I reached a hand up and gingerly poked my head, wincing as pain and dizziness flared from the top of my head. It was also swollen. Once the crippling nausea faded, I hauled myself towards the hole, at least to get further away from the magma.

The chasm I was in was dark, the minimal light from the surface and the harsh light from the magma casting eerie shadows along the walls and the irregularities, shadows flickering against each other and dancing to the tune of my increasingly-fast heart. I felt incredibly exposed out here. After all, all it would take is someone sneaking up behind me and pushing me into the pool. Selriona would _never_ do that, but she might not be all that's down here...

A sudden urge to check on her well-being struck me. I got to my feet, waited a few minutes to get my balance, and headed down the same crack in the wall she did.

It didn't take long for the narrow path to slope down. And Titans, was it _narrow._ I could barely move without scraping my sides on a rocky outcropping, which only served to aggravate my headache even more. When it suddenly sloped down I nearly slipped, losing my footing in a steady trickle of water that I was certain I'd left behind. It was dark, too, forcing me to keep one hand covered in coils of slimy twilight flame, and the heat from the magma pool was rapidly replaced by a chill wind originating from somewhere in front of me.

Soon, however, the path leveled off and widened. The trickle of water veered sideways and vanished into a tiny hole that lead deeper into Azeroth's depths. I looked down and, seemingly materializing from nothing, was a single spot of color. I leaned down to inspect it, and my heart caught in my chest. It was a little parallelogram, about as large as my hand, and a rich violet in color. It was the scale of a twilight dragon.

I dropped it and burst into a sprint. The corridor here was wide enough to let me pass without problem, two meters across, and perfectly circular. The scale fluttered up next to me, hovering by my side. As I ran, more and more scales appeared to materialize out of the gloom, leaping off the stone and floating next to the ones already by my side, condensing into a single object.

Suddenly, out of the darkness, something appeared before me, forcing me to stop. It was a woman about my age. She had blue-green eyes with a gray circle around the pupils, and a narrow, angular face with sunken cheeks. She swept her long blonde hair behind her, and blew a tuft of it out of her eyes. She didn't wear proper clothes, rather there was just a strange _warping _around her body, like she was cloaked in incredibly heavy fog. It was hard to keep my attention on it, though, and I kept finding my gaze drawn back to her face. The closer I looked, the more details I saw. A pore here, tiny hair there. But if I looked away, they would fade back into smooth skin.

"Hey," I told her. "Leila, what are you doing down here?"

"I don't know," she said frantically. "I was just... and then I was here. Mother, I'm scared."

I wrapped my arms around her, the shifting orb of twilight scales next to me hovering silently. "It's ok, it's ok. Want to help me find someone down here? She's a good friend of mine."

Suddenly she jerked away from me, voice turning ragged, cold and hollow. "No, no. I don't want to." She stepped back, tiny wrinkles forming around her eyes, her mouth. "I don't want to help you. Why should I? You let me die."

I furrowed my eyes. "What are you talking about? You're not dead, you're right here."

"You let me die." Her hair began to lose its golden sheen, turning to a steely gray. "You let me die, you could've kept me alive but you let me die. You let father live." Her hair turned brilliant white, her skin wrinkled and eyes losing their shine. "Why? Why did you let Jason live, but let me die? You let me die!"

Suddenly her hands reached out and grasped my shoulders, bony and skinny and impossibly strong, as she continued to age, her teeth falling out of her head as she shook me, repeating constantly that _You let me die you let me die you let me die. _I tried to jerk back, avert my gaze from her face as it turned pale and the skin sloughed off, but found myself unable to even scream as she became a dessicated corpse, shouting at me until she was a skeleton, then turned to dust. I regained control over my body and the scream that had been building in my throat burst forth in a screech.

The tunnel shook.

I calmed down in an instant, looking up warily. Selriona was still trapped under here, and judging by these scales, something had happened to her. I didn't even remember the horrible rotting visage of... who had it been? I once again sprinted through the dark, wet tunnel, more and more twilight scales joining the mass by my side. It began to shift into a new form, but what it was I couldn't make out from the corner of my eye. All I was aware of was the spot of light in the distance growing brighter and brighter, and as I grew closer and closer I felt the scales swarm around my body like clothes.

The light at the end of the tunnel engulfed me, and the next thing I new I was in an _enormous_ chamber.

It was a hemisphere of jagged black stone, with tumorous growths of dark gray stone along the walls and the floor. A dim light filled the area, but from where it originated I couldn't see. There was, however, one thing I had _no_ problem seeing.

Selriona was on her stomach, wings pinned to her side by what looked like black ropes, tail, paws, and head held firmly to the ground. More ropes bound her jaws shut to keep her from breathing fire.

"Selriona!" I shouted. The shifting scales around my body settled into place, forming a helm, chestplate, and leggings made out of very shadow-resistant, violet scales. Tough, but flexible, and not too heavy. Nothing like that gods-awful heavy stuff warriors bore. I started towards her when the ground erupted around me in a shower of dust, forcing me to raise my hands to shield my eyes. Something wrapped around my legs, my arms, my shoulders, waist, and neck. I opened my eyes and horrible realization dawned on me. Those weren't ropes. They were _tentacles_, pitch black with gray spikes along them digging into my twilight-scale armor, pulsing with wickedness and evil, binding me in place.

"Selriona, do something! Shapeshift, teleport, anything!" She shuffled a bit in her binds, but otherwise did little to try and free herself. Her eyes snapped forward, the slit pupils narrowing until I could barely see them. I followed her gaze, and my blood turned to ice. There, marching towards her head, was a felguard, its enormous, double-edged axe in its hands. I couldn't speak. I couldn't struggle against the tendrils. I just watched in horror as the felguard walked up to Selriona. She too had gone frozen, watching as it lifted its axe up. The axe glowed bright yellow, radiating the Holy Light, and, after a few seconds holding it above her head, the felguard swung right _down._

Thank the Light, I didn't see it hit her. The moment the Light-infused demonic axe touched Selriona's head, ready to bury itself in her skull, an enormous fiery explosion radiated outwards from the point of contact, washing over me, scalding the flesh from my bones -

* * *

><p>"AH!" I shot up from my bed with a start, heart beating wildly in my chest. I fumbled around and slammed my left hand to the side, resting it along a familiar, chilly surface. I pulled it over to me, glaring at its painted heart as hard as I could, waiting until my heart stopped thumping. This time, I didn't make an effort to try and open it. Why bother? I would just end up frustrating myself, in addition to listening to some mind-breaking, intentionally vague prophecy.<p>

I counted down in my head, setting the puzzle box to the side. Two, one...

_'Nightmare again?' _Selriona asked me across the link.

I sighed into the telepathic connection. _'Yeah. Same dream, too. Wish I knew what it means.'_

_'You could always go ask the Green Flight, you know. They're experts with dream interpretation.'_

_'No, no. I'm fine. What time do we have to be in the camp?'_

_'Only a few minutes, get moving Amanthe! I'll be waiting for you at the entrance.'_

_'Got it.' _I pulled myself out of bed, rubbing the sleep from my eyes as I waited for my heart to stop trying to break my ribs. The room I was in couldn't even really be called a room. It was a small tent, hardly large enough for me on my lonesome, with violet coverings. The bed I slept on was technically not even a bed, but rather a bed _roll. _As I got off of it darkness and fog rippled outwards from me in all directions, bouncing off the walls. Looking towards my left, I saw the puzzle-box, enchanted to stay within the twilight realm using the wood on it, making the plane of reality think the wood still lived.

I crouched and slipped out of the tent, careful not to touch the flaps, and made for the camp's exit.

It was not a very large camp, to be perfectly honest, but it warranted attention. A few dozen tents, some the size of the one I was just in, and some quite large ones that stored food and armor, among other things. They formed the outer circle of the camp, with the inner circle being comprised of a training arena, complete with a rack for weapons and armor, a circle for elemental summoning, and a platform for giving speeches, with a large tent stretching behind it for meetings between the more important members of the camp. There was nothing beyond the inner circle; the middle of the camp was for traversing between other points within the camp. Footsteps appeared in the endless, brown soil, and sometimes a faint purple blob of mist floated along, creating said footsteps. Once or twice rocks flew forward, being kicked by someone within the physical realm. I found my way out of the camp, until I came to a little protrusion of rock to hide behind and return to the physical realm.

Chilling, dark blue fire engulfed every bit of my skin before I _tugged_ myself into the physical realm, light and sound returning to normal as rippling mist and twisting shadows faded away, the swirling sky returning to an overcast one. Judging from the smell of the air, it would rain today. It always did when the air smelled _that_ way.

The Twilight's Hammer camp laid in a region that no longer had any right to its name. Desolace, it's called. Desolate, it most certainly is not. Verdant green grass springs from every corner of the earth, covering the hills, the plains, and the mountains. Green-scaled thunder lizards stomped around in herds, scorpions cannibalized each other, and even a few kodos collected around trees, bashing them with their horns so that fruit would drop. The air was light and sweet, but charged with the smell of an upcoming storm. I didn't concern myself with that; I could just shield myself from the rain.

I walked back toward the camp, which was rather repetitive. However, I couldn't just tell them I slept in their camp within the twilight realm. They'd catch on very, very quick that I was spying on them. So, as far as any member in the cult knew, I teleported every day to a little camp in the woods, and teleported back at the start of a meeting the next day. I definitely didn't share someone else's bed roll in their own tent, separated by a plane of existence. No, certainly not, what an absurd notion, why would you even consider that?

The camp hardly even had an 'entrance', rather just an unusually large hole between two tents, with orcish guards on either side. In between the two was a night elf, garbed in dark, sinister purple, with a thinned patch of cloth on her right side. Her hair was black, but when it caught the light just so a violet sheen was revealed to the world, and both her eyes were a vibrant purple. Her eyes had dark circles around them, and the kaldorei's skin was unusually light, a bleached purple. A dull white line ran down her left arm, all the way to her middle finger's tip. Her capacitor was currently not around her neck at all, but stowed in a special pocket that she shapeshifted into existence then sealed off the fabric of.

"Hey," she greeted me, turning to face me, her face lighting up. She waved me over, and the two of us walked in, the guards not even looking at us twice. "Glad you made it in time, we're supposed to be helping them come up with their battle strategy today."

_'Excellent. So, when do we go tell Nijel's Point?'_ I asked through the link. At the same time, I asked verbally, "Finally figure out how to kill those heretics?"_  
><em>

_'After the meeting, I'm needed to help new initiates train. You, however, have the rest of the day off, I spoke to Devron. Go through the twilight realm and warn them of whatever plan we come up with.' _"Yep, finally do," she continued in the reality, as several Hammer initiates walked past us, keeping a respectful distance. A single drop of rain splattered on my nose, making me look up, frowning. I knew it. Most of the Twilight's Hammer initiates were walking around camp, taking inventory, dueling, or heading towards the summoning circle to practice their magic, which Selriona and I made sure had a healthy number of mishaps...

A blast of fire and several screams of pain confirmed another successful sabotage, the out of control fire elemental being put down a moment later with the sound of hissing steam. I couldn't help but wince. That must've hurt.

Before too long, we reached the meeting room. It was the large tent next to the speech platform, but not excessively large. Maybe three times the size of the cramped tent I slept in. And much of it was occupied, filled with boxes that contained bound elementals, sparking and rumbling quietly in their corners, each element separated from its polar opposite to avoid any... incidents. In the middle of the tent was a table, a map of Desolace sharing the area with another map, this one of Nijel's Point and its defenses. Around them were figurines of elementals, me, Selriona's night elf form, the two other leaders of this branch of the Twilight Hammer, in addition to Captain Porialis, the leader of the defenses of Nijel's Point.

The two other leaders walked in mere moments after Selriona and I took our positions at the table next to each other, walking in behind us and stopping next to the two remaining corners.

The first was a Forsaken, and a rather morose looking one at that. He was missing a left ear, and bore a large black cross on his face. His violet armor was well worn and dented, some pieces missing or broken, showing off the exposed bones of his joints and ribcage. His empty eye-sockets promised death when I looked at them, so I tried to look at something else, anything else. The pale, bald dome of his head, the claw-like finger bones, rotten black teeth. To say nothing of Blackmorrow's _smell._

The other one was a human, older than me in appearance but _certainly_ not in age. His tattered dark brown hair was flecked with streaks of ashen silver, clustering around his ears and dusting the back of his head. He was a rogue by training, but showed none of it in the clumsy manner in which he moved. He was even louder than I was, and my skill in walking silently was somewhere between zero and none. He also didn't carry any weapons with him, which was strange for a leader of the Twilight's Hammer; even Blackmorrow carried that red staff on his back, the orange crystals embedded right beneath its surface undulating hypnotically.

I mentally shook my head at the human, Devron. He was, of the four 'leaders' of the camp, the only one who really was dedicated to the Old Gods. He didn't _hear_ them, I'd made sure of that. Selriona and I, of course, had reached our positions by being very good in combat, delivering 'vital' intel of Nijel's Point given to us by Captain Porialis, and a few accidental summoning incidents with promising candidates. Blackmorrow, however...

He was corrupted by the Legion, and not just lightly; a good five times beyond the threshold of not trying to save them. Within the twilight realm, he was a burning beacon of red, almost as intense as Mal'ganis had been back in the day. But he showed no signs of being anything other than undead; no aura of fear, nightmares from his presence, or unusual power and strength. Physically, he was pathetic, but warlocks always have ways to make up for that. The staff on his back pulsated.

There were little pleasantries between us, which was only to be expected between one person corrupted by Old Gods, and three others pretending to be. The entire meeting was spent organizing the plot to defeat Nijel's Point. Selriona and I were especially hostile, to each other even, but we knew it was an act. We gave false information, coordinating with each other through the link, but were careful to keep it lined up with what the other spies had said before they met their unfortunate demises. We drew using several pencils, directing troop movements, places to open elemental rifts, and so on. As we did, part of Selriona's essence within the twilight realm wrote a letter with a charcoal pen, keeping her attention only partially focused in the physical realm as she wrote the report on the Hammer's plot.

I wondered, plotting out the attack route that would cripple the enemy boy lines, but would mysteriously be ambushed by a group of guards before they could complete their mission. I wondered how much Blackmorrow knew about us. Did he _know _Selriona was a dragon, or did he just suspect that we too were against the Twilight's Hammer? Was he planning anything for us? We'd inspected his quarters multiple times, only to find nothing, in addition to following his corruption signature to a little plain where he presumably contacted his demonic overlords. But we got nothing. Selriona and I had tried to assassinate him, keep him from carrying out _anything_, but we simply never got the opportunity. He was too good, keeping close to others, away from dark shadows, which only gave more credence to the idea of him suspecting us. And we were _not_ about to blow our cover just to outright attack him. As to why we didn't just wipe the camp off the face of Azeroth entirely, the corruption level was surprisingly low. Aside from Devron and a handful of others, the hundred and fifty cultists - not much, but enough to challenge Nijel's Point - warranted the effort to uncorrupt, to save.

It was disturbing. General Vajarn had taken a long look into the Records a few decades ago, and uncovered a very bad pattern. Starting at around the end of the Cataclysm, individual Twilight's Hammer camps tended to have agents of the Burning Legion planted into them. At first, there weren't many of them; when I encountered Mal'ganis in Orgrimmar, only about a tenth of the observed groups had been infiltrated. Now, though, over two hundred years later, it was rare to find a camp that _wasn't_ being observed or controlled by the Legion. Which could only mean that whatever plot _they_ had was progressing.

It took a few hours, a lot of arguing and shouting, and extreme frustration, but we finally came up with an adequate plan to utterly level Nijel's Point. A main force would lead the major attack, up the ramp leading to the town, which would be a bottleneck to our disadvantage. At the same time, a group of summoners would sneak behind enemy lines and use the elemental summoners to unleash havoc within the core of their army, at which point those at the ramp could pour in and kill everybody. It wasn't a very elaborate strategy, but it didn't have to be, since it hinged on the guards and commanders of Nijel's Point being completely unaware of the Twilight's Hammer camp.

Oops, my bad.

Once we were finally done, it didn't take long for us to depart. None of the others were eager to be around us, nor were we willing to be around them. Selriona, of course, still had work to do here, as did Devron and Blackmorrow. She and I took turns getting 'breaks', during which we went to Nijel's Point under cover of twilight and gave a report. Luckily, it was not that uncommon for Devron and Blackmorrow to also leave camp, so we didn't stick out like sore thumbs. She covertly handed me the letter when nobody was looking, and we split up. It was child's play to find a corner to sink into the twilight realm with. Those blood elf siblings would be passing by _now_, which gave me fifteen to twenty seconds until the dwarf came past, which was ample time. I sank into the twilight realm with the ease of two hundred years of practice.

_'You off?' _Selriona asked.

_'Yep. See you later.'_ With that, I took off for Nijel's Point.

It wasn't too far, but the camp was hidden well. Nestled close to the mountains, close to the haunted ruins of a shattered night elf city, no scout dared approach it. The entrance to Nijel's Point was, as discussed, a long ramp that doubled as a mountain passage. The impassable walls on either side that definitely were not rigged with dropping grenades would force any invading army to march through a chokepoint, provided they didn't know about other, secret passages like the Cult did. I marched up the ramp, occasionally weaving holy barriers on myself to increase my speed. I didn't rise out of the twilight realm quite yet, lest I stumble upon another member of the Twilight's Hammer spying on the elves. The odds of that were minuscule especially with the rain now falling in a light drizzle, but the risk was not worth it; we'd only recently gotten the Hammer to start letting their guard down, after decades of relentless persecution. I was not about to be the one who alerts them that something was off.

Nijel's Point was a fairly small night elf establishment, and why Devron had set his sights on conquering it was a mystery. There was no strategic advantage, no major equipment to be found, nothing. I suspected the only reason was to provide the cult with a morale boost, with at least one victory after centuries of failure. The town was dominated by the inn, which sat partway on a hill, pillars supporting the half that dangled above a drop. There were other buildings, too; tall barracks, a smithy pouring heat waves into Desolace, a moonwell shining bright, tailor's shop smelling of dyes. Hidden out of view, I knew there was a circular platform of white stone where hippogryphs rested.

I found Captain Porialis gazing into the moonwell. He wore his typical forest green plate armor, complete with a helmet that would only barely let me see his gray eyes, with bands over the mouth-hole as if his upper lip was melting. He had no weapon on him. I stepped behind him, my shoes tapping on the stone of the moonwell. Three seconds until he says my name...

"Greetings, Amanthe." Nailed it. Another two until he turns around, like always. A moment later, he turned around, facing me. "Weekly report?"

I nodded. "Yep. We came up with the battle-plan just now. It's not that detailed, they think you're just unsuspecting. In two day's time, a diversion army of one-hundred assorted warriors, archers, and warlocks, positioned in that order, will come up the ramp, and they have no idea about all the traps you've got. At the same time, a group of shamans uses the northeastern pass. You know, the one that drops you near the inn? They'll bring the elemental summoners there to create havoc, which will then let the main attack force push through, and after that it's basically just 'Go go go, kill everyone'."

He nodded, rubbing the chin of his helmet. "Excellent, thank you for this information. Now we know their numbers, strengths, _and_ strategy. I'll set up the interception team immediately. I trust you and your patron shall fight alongside us?"

I nodded. "Of course. She'll provide air support, and I'll help with the ramp army, however you need me to. Of course, if Selriona tells me to help out another place, I'll go there regardless." A frown melted onto my face. "Still no clue what Blackmorrow is planning. Better be ready for demons, just in case."

He waved an arm towards the moonwell. "Of course. The sacred waters of Elune will be more than enough to take care of any demons. Throwing a bottle filled with it is devastating; it's like acid to them."

"Great. Remember, take as many prisoners as you can so that we can purge them of corruption."

He shrugged. "I'll instruct the men to take prisoners if they can, but if the opportunity does not arise, I'm afraid there's nothing I can do for you."

I sighed. Well, that was to be expected. "Thank you regardless, Porialis. If that's all you need of me, I'll be taking my leave."

Despite me not being one of his soldiers, he said, "Dismissed."

I rolled my eyes and headed up a hill, towards the inn. Once there, I took a left, heading for the hippogryph roost. Five of the antler-bearing birds sat in straw-filled wooden nests, umbrellas fixed to their nests protecting them from the rain, looking around at random. The flight master was next to one on the far right, brushing its feathers with a large brush. A small gap in the mountains let me look down to the green plains of Desolace, sprawling with life, an enormous tree far in the distance. I looked up, the rain falling increasingly hard. When one drop landed in my eye, I grunted and wiped it away with a finger, before speaking a word of power to shield myself. He should be here by now... ah!

As if in accordance with my thoughts, a dark blue form descended from the skies, almost invisible among the darkening skies. leathery wings beating against the rain. A satchel was fastened around his neck with a leather strap, flopping against his light blue stomach as he flew. The hippogryphs squawked angrily as he set down, forcing their tender to walk around, making her whisper words of reassurance in Darnassian, which I didn't know a word of. The drake walked over to me and nodded, the satchel's strap falling forward along his neck, only to be caught by a horn.

I greeted the twilight drake in his native tongue. "Hi Lurelion. Got the letters?"

He dipped his head some more, rotating it around in annoyance, until I walked up and helped him remove the bag. "Yes, I do. There's been a development and - ah, I should let the letters speak for themselves." He stretched, flaring out his wings and extended his forelegs like a cat. Lurelion's claws clicked on the stone ground, and one of his wing talons nearly hit a hippogryph. It squawked angrily at him, ruffling its dark green feathers, and in response the dragon hissed at it. I noticed the tender watching him carefully, ready to pull out her sword if he should attack. Not surprising; judging from how old she looked, she was probably alive during the Cataclysm.

I reached into the bag and grasped the stack of papers, pulling them out. It was a good sized stack of four, with letters from my husband, my Aspect, and several other observers around the world. He didn't deliver _all_ messages, of course. That would just be an absurd workload; he only transported messages that directly related between two groups, and he wasn't the only one doing so.

Normally, we would use teleportation for communication, but frequent teleportation would eave behind nether-lines that our enemies could use to start observing _us. _We preferred to keep it the other way around.

I curtsied to the drake. "Thank you, Lurelion." I reached into my robes and took the letter Selriona had written in her near-unreadable handwriting, as well as the one addressed to Jason I'd written the day before, and stuffed it into the bag. He bowed his head before me and I slipped it over his head, behind the three crystal-like azure horns on his crest. "Take this to Grim Batol, and have whoever's watching the Records enter it in."

He nodded. "As you wish, Eldest." With another dirty look at the hippogryphs, he took off, soaring out of sight in mere seconds, the blast of wind from his takeoff surging around my barrier. I turned around, shuffling through the letters until I found the one I desired. Finding the seal of Stormwind on it, I placed the letter into my robes and continued on.

_'Hey, Lurelion just dropped by, said there's been a development.'_

_'Really? Did he say what happened?'_

_'No, he said the letters would explain all we'd need to know. Want me to drop by so we can start sorting through them?'_

_'Sure, come right over! I'll shift some of me into the twilight realm, meet me in the middle of the camp. Can't exactly separate myself in the twilight realm too much. Hurts like hells if I do.'_

_'I'm on my way.'_ Just as I thought that my stomach knotted painfully, reminding me I hadn't had anything to eat all day, and it was closing in on dinner time. _'On second thought, I'm starving. I'll be there in a few hours, gonna stop by the inn.'_

_'Don't bother, a banquet's being held here. Pre-victory feast, or something, they have no idea what's going to happen to them.'_

_'Hmm_,_'_ I grunted in both the link and in reality. _'Better them than us, though. Anyway, I'm on my way.' _A half-hour walk later through steadily weakening rain later, I returned to the cultist camp. The smell of an aroma reached my nose, pulling me in like a moth to a flame. I spotted the dining table in no time; in the summoning arena, a sheet of rock had been uplifted, with another dome of rock over it to keep out the rain. Just as well; rain didn't have much force on its own, but it kept coming, forcing me to recast my shield several times.

The rest of the cult was either grabbing food from the table, delicious thunderlizard steaks, salads spiced with local herbs, scorpion tails, all delicious. For all their faults, the Twilight's Hammer knows how to make food; only reasonable, since their goal is to kill everyone and everything; why not have a great last meal?

I grabbed a stone plate and heaped it with food, as well as grabbing one of the stone 'glasses' filled with water, either rain or conjured, and walking to a corner of the camp where nobody could see me. I sunk into the twilight realm and absolutely _dug in._ There were no utensils, so I used my hands, getting all sorts of sauce on my fingers, but I hardly cared; I was _ravenous._

Before too long, Selriona came by me and sat down on the ground with me, also within the twilight realm. "Hey, you got the letters?"

"Mmmhmm," I said through a full mouth, nodding and reaching into my robes to pull out the letters. I frowned when I saw that I smudged one of their corners, and that they were slightly wet from the rain Lurelion had flown them through, but that hardly mattered when Selriona handed it back to me.

"That one's from your mate." My face tingled when she said that. Did she have to be so _blunt_ about it? "Let's see what these ones are," she said, turning back to the others and ripping one open. She read through it; it was clearly Verthelion's handwriting, judging by the near-illegible chicken-scratch Draconic runes. I peered over at it, reading through it with her. It was a fairly standard report, it appeared. A general status of Azeroth - nearly clean - an update on Selriona's brood in the Amethyst Sanctum being taken care of by dragonspawn while she was on her mission here, so on and so forth. The second letter was from the watchers on Un'goro who reported foiling an attempt by the Twilight's Hammer to agitate the fire and earth elementals near the central volcano. Partially foiled, it specified, since they interrupted the ritual only partway through. Apparently, a copy was sent to _everyone_, lest they learn the _hard_ way that the Un'goro volcano had grown unstable. The Earthen Ring was also being sent a letter to request their help in calming down the volcano.

I opened my letter from Jason and began to scan my eyes along the contents.

_Amanthe,_

_ I hope this letter manages to find you. I don't exactly trust Lurelion. Nonetheless, if you are reading this, I wish you the best of luck on your mission, and I hope you get the opportunity to come back soon. I miss you. I kind of feel I should have taken up the offer to join your Flight, but I'm still not sure. My place is in the Alliance, just as yours is in the Dragonflights. Anyway, I finally got around to fixing that floorboard, you know, the one that always broke off when we stepped on it? That one. It's all better now. Okay, so maybe I bought a new board entirely and chucked the old one into the fireplace, but hey, what can you do? So, there's not really much for me to write to you about. How are you, and all that? Although, by the time you're reading this you'll have sent another letter to me. I'm doing fine, my job at the enchanter's is going really smoothly. I wish you the best of luck with your mission in the Twilight's Hammer. Please come back soon._

_Your loving husband,_

_ Jason Consecrus _

I sighed and folded the letter back. I missed him, but this was incredibly important. The entire Flight, myself included, was on extremely high alert for the Burning Legion and, by extension, the Twilight's Hammer. And Selriona and I had been picked by straws to come watch the group in Desolace after a patrol dragonspawn had found them. By the Light, I wanted to go _home.__  
><em>

The fourth letter was what really caught our attention. I didn't read it myself, but according to Selriona it was a report from Murdonia - Verthelion's sister and Selriona's clutch-mate - and Turliona, a dragonspawn we'd known since the Cataclysm. The Burning Legion just suddenly appeared at their outpost in the Storm Peak. Before they could properly organize a defense, the Legion made off with the body of an iron vrykul stolen from a nearby Titan forge, then vanished without a trace.

"What do you think?" she asked me.

Food still filling my mouth, I used the link. _'It's not good. What would the Legion want with something made by the Titans? Last I checked, they were mortal enemies. And I doubt an iron vrykul would even obey them.'_

"I don't know. Titan technology is extremely advanced, and I don't think the iron vrykul was active yet."

_'What do you mean?'_ I inquired.

"It says that it was an empty vrykul, its soul hadn't been put in yet. The Burning Legion basically took a single dead iron vrykul with them, and nothing else."

_'Who knows what they can do with that? I mean, you saw what they did with the two draenei relics they stole - they got a super powerful magic amplifier. If they get an iron vrykul... who knows? But are the Titan constructs there doing anything?'_

"She doesn't mention. But you're right, this is worrying. The Burning Legion is apparently interested in the Old Gods and the Titans. Manipulating the cult, taking Titan constructs... Titans, this is bad. When will they make their move?"

I swallowed the salad in my mouth. "Maybe they already have..." I said ominously. I looked up at the overcast skies of the twilight realm. "I mean, there's not a whole lot we can do about that. Short of going _back_ to Argus and stealing it back, and I kind of think they learned their lesson after you showed up on their doorstep."

"We're screwed," she said simply.

"Oh yeah."

I ate for a while longer standing up, my plate cleaned. "Well, I'm gonna turn in for the night. See you tomorrow, Selriona."

"Yeah," she said, her form shimmering and growing exponentially until she laid in her true form, eyes slowly closing. "Going to get some sleep too. Haven't slept in over a week, there's _so_ much to do!"

"Take tomorrow off," I told her, knowing that a sleep-deprived dragon could easily sleep away an entire day. "I'll make something up. Have fun dealing with Nalestrasza" A steady stream of snores signified her state, and I shook my head. "Wonderful. Just wonderful." Still, I left my plate and glass, now devoid of all food and water, got up, and found the tent I liked to sleep in. I crashed down on the bedroll, puzzle box beside me. My eyes closed as well, sleep claiming me.

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><p><strong>So begins another section. Close to the finish too, yikes. Review, let me know what you think please!<strong>


	32. Chapter 32:Once More

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Chapter published 1/23/13**

* * *

><p><span>Amanthe<span>

"Hey," I whispered in Draconic, nudging the enormous, scaled head next to me. Enormous it was; even the horns were a little taller than I. She slowly breathed in through her nostrils, a rush of air blowing out each time she exhaled. I nudged her again, near the left ear-plate. "Wake up," I said, a little louder. The dragon grunted, shaking her head and sending ripples of shadows and mist away from her. I shoved her even harder. "Come on, up you get." This time, the reptile didn't even budge.

I stepped away, glaring at her. I could've sworn she was laughing on the inside. "Alright then... let's see if this works." I stepped back, taking a deep, deep breath. Shadow magic swirled in my throat in vast quantities, choking me, blocking air, until I let loose my most powerful psychic scream yet. Selriona's shadow resistance didn't protect her enough against a scream that potent and that close to her. Her eyes instantly snapped open, and she rolled away from me until she was on her back, where she flailed her legs and tail about, rolling back onto her paws, breathing heavily. After a few moments of raising one foreleg to her chest to try to slow down her heart, she glared at me, her six tusks unsheathed, pupils narrow slits and wings flared to their fullest extent.

"By the Titans, Amanthe! What was that for?"

"You wouldn't get up. Come on, this is important. The attack's starting soon."

She shook the residual fear out of her ear-plates. "We need to kill Blackmorrow," she stated simply, tusks retracting and wings relaxing, her pupils filling out to not-as-narrow slits. "Whatever plans he has, he'll execute them today. Wish we had the opportunity to kill him earlier, but oh well."

I sighed. "Already thought of that. We don't have the chance _now_ either. I've been searching for him all day _and_ yesterday - he's gone. Teleported, since I can't find his trail within the twilight realm. Devron and I did a headcount earlier today before I had a chance to come here - he's labeled both you and Blackmorrow traitors, as well as like, a dozen others that are gone. Seems he's been busy indoctrinating, and he was careful so we wouldn't notice. I think he knows."

She snarled, shaking her head, making her neck frill oscillate back and forth. "Wonderful, just _wonderful._ Well, what about you?"

I shrugged, a few wisps of purple mist traveling by in the distance. "Well, I imagine the cult spent a few minutes searching for me when I suddenly vanished in the middle of Devron's pre-march speech. And if I'm right, they'll start marching right about now, since it took me so long to _find_ you. Now come on, we have to go to Nijel's Point!"

She nodded. "Right, right. Got it." She lowered her stomach to the ground. "Climb on, I'll take you there."

"No, need to stop by the camp first, get my armor."

"Oh, right. Well, it's a lot shorter by air so climb on anyway."

Without further word I approached her, climbing on as best I could, using my levitation spell to help me in places. Soon, though, I was on her back, grabbing onto the giant, armor-like plates behind her horns. She reared onto her hind legs, flapping, then took off, my stomach lurching as she did. It only took one minute for her twilight realm-strengthened wings to carry me back to the Hammer's tent, where I got off and floated down gently. Once on the ground, I headed for the training arena. It was really nothing more than a large circle in the ground, its boundaries defined by a line drawn in the ground, but right outside it was a rack for weapons. It was completely barren, except for the suit of full-body armor that I'd enchanted to stay only in the twilight realm, unless I took it out. Behind me, Selriona waited patiently for me to prepare myself for battle.

I admired the armor as I strapped it on - it was made entirely out of dark purple scales I'd collected from Selriona as she shed them. They retained their shadow-resisting properties, so me wearing it would make me nearly impervious to shadow bolts and the like. Straight up curses wouldn't be impeded, but it was still valuable considering where the Flight's charge tends to land me. It was flexible, light, but didn't provide much physical protection on its own. However I could _never _find the physical strength to carry plate armor on me for actual protection. It was just too heavy - I tried it once, I could barely even sit up under its weight.

I strapped on the chestplate, the leggings, gloves, and the boots. The helmet was similar to a hood that wrapped around my head, obscuring my forehead and my cheeks, connected under my nose. It didn't cover my face so as to not limit vision, and my mouth was open in case I ever needed to use a psychic scream. I turned back to Selriona, walking towards her. Once I was on her back again, she took off, heading for Nijel's Point to aid in the defense. If I was right, the cult would be almost there by the time we arrived.

It didn't take long for her to touch down, the twilight realm melting into reality around us. Several dozen night elves stepped back in surprise, shouting and raising swords and glaives to her. My friend ignored them, lowering her stomach to the ground and letting me off.

"Alright, thanks," I whispered to her in Draconic. I noticed Captain Porialis walking towards me, dressed in full battle armor with a longsword in its scabbard.

"Amanthe," he said. "Greetings." He cast a wary eye at Selriona, not meeting her gaze as she stood to her full, _intimidating_ height. "Selriona. The Twilight's Hammer has been spotted moving this way, they'll be here in a few minutes. Amanthe, head towards the inn, you'll be with our interception crew to stop the Hammer's attempts at summoning elementals behind our lines. Dragon, you stay here and just breathe fire down the canyon."

She turned a curious gaze on him. "Don't you have enough traps to keep it covered?"

"Yes, but we'd much rather have you simply cover it in fire to stop them entirely. If you agree, of course."

I could see her debating it in her mind. On the one hand, she was being ordered around by a _mortal_, but on the other hand, relationships with the night elves had always been strained since we revealed our existence, and arguments with them were _not_ needed. In the end, she huffed, rising onto her hind legs. "I'll take to the skies and provide air support where you need it. Me engulfing them in my flames would mean _very_ few prisoners." She took off with a rush of wind, each flap of her large, bat-like wings sending out another blast of air. "Word of caution, Blackmorrow has vanished, and he's taken several members of the cult with him. Be on the lookout, we haven't been able to learn _anything_ about his plans."

With that, she took to the air, and I headed for the inn. The cult's entire plan was based around the night elves having no clue they were coming. They didn't exactly have the best of discipline or training, in spite of their efforts to change this. This wouldn't be a battle. It was going to be a massacre.

* * *

><p><span>Selriona<span>

I perched on a little mountaintop, near the town. Not one of the tallest ones, but close enough that I could scope the area out. There were the cultists, marching in a band around the mountain, unable to see me as I absorbed the light around me into twilight. And there, back there, a group of maybe fifteen hauling a wagon filled with elemental containers. There were several reasons Amanthe and I had let it come this far. Mainly, we needed to take prisoners in order to cure them of their corruption. And as powerful as I was, tackling them alone with Amanthe would be suicidal. Defending a position was always easier than attacking it, so the plan was to let them break themselves on their offensive, then move in, uncorrupt those we could and, depending on the state of things after, either move elsewhere or stick around a while longer.

I kept waiting, waiting for the battle to unfold. As the cult's main force reached the ramp, I decided to take action.

They were moving at a brisk pace, running in rows, so I brought a small bit of fire into my crop and launched it out of my mouth, blasting it into the middle of their ranks. The dark blue fireball didn't have much force behind it, doing little more than injuring one person, but it was enough to make them panic and just blindly charge up. From my visits to the Point over the past few months, I knew what sort of traps had been set up, and therefor it was no surprise when they triggered a tripwire, sending scalding hot water crashing down onto them from above. Screams of pain filled the air and I winced in sympathy. That had to have hurt. Still, some of their archers had avoided the spill and now took aim, firing a volley through the air. I pulled on my magic, weaving it into lines to power an orb that would trigger on contact, using its own power to provide a shield that would block anything coming in IF it was moving fast enough, fast as an arrow.

The result was a sphere of twilight energy forming over the defenders for a clawful of seconds, just long enough to block the volley of arrows, fading in time to let them return their own volley, which resulted in screams of pain. Satisfied they could easily hold out, what with the flash bombs they had yet to release, I flew over to the interception squad to lend a claw since Amanthe was there. I stopped bending light around me, since it was tricky to do and I couldn't focus enough while moving. Speaking of Amanthe...

_'Have you reached them yet?' _I asked.

_'Almost. I kinda feel bad for them.'_

_'Just stay safe, Amanthe. I'll be providing fire for you.' _I spotted the two-dozen strong group closing in on the cultist wagon. _'Alright, got you. See the wagon?'_

_'Yep, got it in my sights.' _The two groups clashed, the kaldorei forces forming a shield wall to advance, with Amanthe behind it casting her spells. I spotted a shadow bolt fly towards her, arcing over the warriors, but get absorbed by a barrier of Light.

_'Well, I'm setting it on fire now.'_ At the moment I thought that, I sent a bolt of dark fire down, hitting a bullseye on the wagon. Amanthe shouted at the night elves to get down, and they all obeyed. Multicolored explosions filled the air below me, and I swerved around, heading back for the main rampart battle now that the explosion had flattened the cultists. I spread out my wings to their full extent, clearing ground at an incredible rate. Suddenly, something black flickered in the corner of my left eye.

I roared in pain as something tore through my left wing membrane, then fell back down, a hooked piece of metal tearing away over half the leathery surface on my left wing. White-hot agony blinded me, and for a few sickening seconds I managed to keep my grip on the air, before slipping and falling to the left. I tried to right my balance, to roll over onto all fours, but without the proper lift from my left side the most I managed to do was flip myself upside down, and then continue flailing. The metal hook had pulled out of my wings, and a moment later I slammed into the ground, stomach first, pain enveloping my body.

_'Argh!__' _I screamed, accidentally using the link. I struggled to get to my paws, but a moment later something like a sledgehammer attacked my mind, utterly stunning me. I gasped and fell down, and I was aware of being surrounded by a dozen or so mortals, in a little spot within the mountains, hidden from the outside. A thick, heavy lance of metal flew over my body, then pulled taught, forcing me to the ground. I growled and fought the pain in both my body and mind, readying a blast of fire, but someone in front of me - _Blackmorrow_, I noticed - took his gemed staff and swung it through the air, nearly scratching my horns. Where it swung, it left a shadowy trail, which seeped into me. I almost laughed - he was using _shadow? _Against _me? _But then something was wrong. I couldn't open my jaws. I couldn't access my magic. He'd _silenced_ me.

With all my strength, I tried to rise and break the chain, but more mortals swung heavy, spiked maces at each of my legs, breaking each of them in turn with sickening cracks. I tried to open my mouth and roar, but being silenced, I couldn't. Instead the roar just bubbling inside me, burning away at my insides. My vision blurred from the agony, nausea making my sight spin. I tried sinking into the twilight realm to escape, but I discovered that I couldn't even do _that_ with my magic disabled. Fear clawed at my insides. I couldn't move, I couldn't breathe fire with my mouth forced closed, I couldn't do anything, not even use the link. I was helpless.

They threw more chains around my wings, my tail, over my snout, my neck and legs, pulling them tight and rendering me completely immobile, the metal cutting into my scales and drawing blood. I tried to rise, but to no avail; they had earth elementals holding the spikes, no doubt elemental containers Blackmorrow had hijacked. I wondered why they weren't staking the chains into the ground, but I got my answer when the elementals advanced on me. I gave out another muffled roar of pain when they sunk the spikes _into_ my flesh, and they suddenly grew barbs that hooked into me. They linked all the dozen or so chains together in a pattern that promised that, even if I could move them, the barbs embedded in my flesh would cause me utter torture. The wounds began to bleed, the purple blood spilling on the earth and causing the grass to hiss and decay, sterilizing the earth.

It all happened so fast. It only took a few minutes, but I was now unable to fly, unable to so much as move, or use magic, or escape to the twilight realm, and while I was certain my roar from earlier had alerted Amanthe something was wrong, I couldn't use the link to tell her of what was going on with me, to call for help. Fear settled like a stone in my crop. I was going to die. And I was so young too, not even three hundred...

A few other mortals stood with Blackmorrow, forming a circle, chanting, arcane and shadow magic flowing around and through them, collecting in the staff Blackmorrow raised to the sky with two hands. I realized now that he'd been planning this for months. To get this sort of equipment, chains capable of withstanding my strength, he'd definitely _known_. Had likely known for months. He knew I'd fly between the two points, knew when to get me, how to get me isolated, how to defeat me before I could figure out what was going on and defend myself. How long had these others been indoctrinated by him? What did he want?

When they finished their chanting, my heart nearly stopped. At the same time that the earth elementals fell apart, the magic binding them gone, an enormous portal opened right above me, howling with incredible strength, rattling the chains that had been staked into their victim, causing me pain as the spikes moved back and forth, the chains biting deeper into my flesh. I began floating, the mortals long gone into the portal. The higher I floated, the faster I rose, and it only took seconds for the portal to completely engulf me. A few seconds of agonizing travel later, I arrived at my destination._  
><em>

My eyes widened when I saw what it was. I was in what could only be called a temple. It was domed, and the inside of the dome rippled with fel energy. The entire thing was made out of black, shimmering obsidian. I flicked my eyes around it frantically, trying to see where I was. The room was a large, wide cylinder in its lowest portion, and once it rose up to about my full height, it formed a dome that had a small circular hole in its highest point. The angle wasn't perfect, but I could see dark, ashy clouds through it. Also, at the spot where the dome began was a floor that extended out a few meters. A multitude of felguards watched me from there expectantly, as if they were waiting for me to perform for them. Also with them were four red-skinned eredar, about half my height.

Screams of pain brought my gaze back to the mortals, who were busy being run through by doomguards. Blackmorrow wore an expression of shock and betrayal, though the face that held that expression was several wingspans away from his body. That's when my situation truly set in. They hadn't planned to kill me. They planned to capture me, they _did_ capture me. Those clouds, I'd seen them so very, very long ago. Clouds made of volcanic ash. I was on _Argus._

I tried to escape my chains, but the moment I so much as twitched my muscles pain lanced through my left flank, the spike there pulling against my flesh. I opened my mouth to roar, and realized that it was only the chains keeping my mouth shut now - the silence had worn off.

_'Amanthe!'_ I shouted into the link, the four eredar magically floating down next to me. _'Help, you've got to help me! Blackmorrow's known about us for months, I've been chained and kidnapped to Argus, like you were a few decades ago! Titans, I hope you can hear me. Please, you've got to save me. Go to Grim Batol, tell Verthelion.'_ I knew from Amanthe's stay on Argus that I wouldn't hear anything she sent to me, but she could hear my messages. _'He'll know what to do, just please, please don't leave me here...' _I added desperately.

The four eredar, now arranged around me in a circle, began to channel magic into me. No, not into me._ Out _of me, draining my mana at a frightening rate and cursing me with weakness and exhaustion. Before too long, I didn't have a scrap of magic left, and didn't have the strength to so much as extend my tusks. I whimpered in my throat and tried to analyze what else I could in this room from my incredibly limited vantage point.

The one door on top of the 'ring' seemed to be the only entrance and exit, the rest of the temple sealed off from the outside world. My gaze settled on a small object right before me, and my pupils slitted in surprise.

I'd nearly forgotten all about that device. It had been a long time, compared to my short life-time (Which didn't seem to have a chance of getting much longer) , since I'd seen it. It was a spherical object, large enough to fit into a mortal's hand, royal purple and blue, with a glass cylinder in the middle, cutting from pole to pole. It was held in a receptacle of sorts, made of spiked black and green metal. Fel-iron clamps held it in place atop an obsidian pillar, which was decorated with pictures of an enormous humanoid figure, slamming its sword into various objects. Boulders, creatures I couldn't identify, entire worlds. I noticed that, in every picture, the sword's blade was shattered, and the humanoid figure had... a tail? A beard? It was hard to tell through the dim lighting, and it didn't matter. What was the magic amplifier doing here, with me?

I tried to connect it all together. Me being here, the stolen iron vrykul, the captured priests and paladins, the magic amplifier. How did it all connect? I didn't know. But I did know who could figure it out.

I tried to pass out. It wasn't that hard. I was already nauseous and tired from blood loss, and the curses, combined with the draining of my mana, sapped my strength even more.

Nalestrasza would know. She always knew, however taciturn she was. I tried to reassure myself that Amanthe was coming, that she'd save me just as I saved her. But looking at the figure shattering planets with its sword, all I could do was say my prayers before losing consciousness.

* * *

><p><span>Amanthe<span>

I knew things were bad when I heard Selriona's pained roar, shortly after she blew up the elemental containers. We'd mopped up the cultists quickly, putting them in chains while they struggled to recover from the shockwave of the blast. Then we went to the main ramp, only to find that battle closing up rapidly. It _had_ been a slaughter.

Then I knew things were even worse when a massive, black portal opened up in the middle of the mountains, around where Selriona had been when I heard her roar. Then I caught a glimpse of purple scales vanishing into it, and I wasted no time. I pushed past Porialis, telling him that I had bigger problems, that Selriona was in trouble.

But then she contacted me with our telepathic link, and I _knew_ things could not possibly get any worse. Argus. Selriona was on Argus. It took me the better part of an hour to get away from Porialis, who kept telling me this was more important than going after her. _Bullshit_ it's more important! My best friend had been kidnapped to Argus just as I had been. She'd rescued me then, and I fully intended to repay the favor. It took me explaining basic uncorruption principles to him in order to get him to let me leave, since _forcing_ my escape wouldn't look good between the kaldorei and my Flight. I trusted him to uncorrupt the prisoners, and then took a portal to Grim Batol - the only place I _knew_ how to portal to - to tell Verthelion. Organize a rescue. Anything!

Mere moments after arriving in the oh-so comforting underground city, my head exploded with debilitating pain. I fell to my knees screaming, unable to focus or concentrate. Scaled hands grabbed me, but I wasn't paying attention, instead squeezing my head with my hands so hard I felt it would burst. Draconic words swirled around me, but I was unable to focus on them through the pain of having the link strained by distance like this. After what felt like an eternity, the pain faded as one of the dragonkin around me figured out to shut off the link, shutting off the pain with it.

I took in gasps of air as my vision cleared, before pulling off the helmet of my twilight scale armor. I focused my eyes on who had cured the pain, and where I was.

I was in one of the higher rings, high above the pool of magma down below. Up here, the air was especially fresh and cool, due to the proximity to air circulation vents and the distance from the molten rock. I was being supported by Ialion in his human form, and several dragonspawn stood around me, looking worried. I recognized his panicked voice easily now that I could think clearly.

I pulled away from him. "I'm fine, Ialion, really. Or, no. Damn it, where's Verthelion? I _have_ to speak with him, it's urgent!"

"Um, uh, you sure you're all right?"

"Damn it Ialion, this is not the time! Where is he? It's about Selriona!"

At the mention of his broodmother, he appeared notably more concerned. "Um, alright. Follow me, he should be in Alexstrasza's guest room right about now." I raised an eyebrow as I began to walk after him, down several flights of stairs, leaving the dragonspawn to return to their patrols with a silent command. What was the Dragonqueen doing in Grim Batol?

We turned a corner, walking past a pair of drakes, one male, one female, talking to each other. Their gazes flickered to me for a moment, before returning to their conversation about how to properly handle downdrafts. I turned my head to Ialion and asked him. "Why's Alexstrasza here?"

He sighed. "It was only a matter of time, really, before someone, something, made a move against her directly. She was corrupted by the Old Gods. We don't know how, but our Ambassador to Wyrmrest, Raliona, managed to notice it before it got too bad. Thank the Titans, too. As you can understand, it really set off the alarm across all five Flights. It took a bit of persuasion, but our queen is here, being uncorrupted by the Aspect himself."

"Speaking of which, are we close?"

"Um, no. Come on, let's run, if it's that urgent." With that, he took off into a run. His stronger legs propelled him very fast, so I had to use shields of Light around myself to keep up with him, the momentary speed boosts letting me catch back up after falling behind in between. Before too long we arrived at what he said was the Dragonqueen's guest room, with two drakonids standing guard outside with their twin-bladed polearms.

It was clearly a makeshift room cobbled together to be hospitable in a few hours. It was about as large as my old house in Stormwind, but was one singular room instead of many smaller ones. The dark blue, almost black stone walls were decorated with warm, vibrant fire torches, as opposed to the eternally burning twilight fire braziers that gave light to most of Grim Batol. Several wooden tables had been brought in, which held bowls filled with assorted fruits and meats, the sparkle of frost giving away the fact that they were magically preserved. A red carpet was plastered onto the floor, with golden edges woven into what might have been patterns, had I inspected them more carefully.

The room had three occupants. One of these was a high elf with ruby hair and deathly pale skin, garbed in gray and red leather clothes. She stood near a wall, looking suspiciously at the other two occupants, stress written on every one of her features. A Red, no doubt, but not Alexstrasza. Her orange irises flickered over Ialion and I when we entered, growing first curious, then annoyed, then they fixated on me again and grew _furious._

The second person was Verthelion, standing before a large, elegant bed with red cushions and a golden cover on it. He seemed drowsy, swaying on his human feet, shoulders slumping. I wondered how much sleep he'd been getting. Sitting on the bed was a tall blood elf. Her skin was incredibly tan, and seemed to be almost glowing from the inside. She was dressed very... immodestly by mortal standards. But dragons. Two horns curved backwards out of her red hair, and her eyes seemed to be on fire, glowing orbs in the sockets. Her hands were covered in plate gloves, the fingers claws, a red cape stretching down her back. When she saw us, she sneered, but almost immediately stopped, surprised, then frowned. She looked my way specifically, and once again turned furious. Why was everyone turning angry when they saw me?

Ialion cleared his throat. "Verthelion, Amanthe wanted to see you. Said it's something important about Selriona."

He turned around, and I could see that the dark circles under his eyes were deeper than usual. "Can it wait a moment? I'm busy uncorrupting Alexstrasza." He turned back to her and held his hands together. The Red Aspect lurched, kneeling over, claw-like hands digging into the bed she sat on and making the wooden frame crack. A purple mist flowed out of her and into Verthelion's hands for a few seconds before stopping, after which Verthelion groaned, his skin shimmering with indigo sparks for a few seconds before stopping. He sighed, and Alexstrasza swayed, as if suddenly she had vertigo. "This is going to take a long time. And I can't do that for another few hours, thanks to the diminishing returns."

The other Red looked at him somewhat angrily. "Why are these two here, and _why_ is this mortal wearing _dragonscale armor?_" Oh, that's why they're angry. I tightened my grip on the helmet by my side.

Luckily, Verthelion recognized me. "Oh, that's Amanthe, my Prime Consort's Dragonsworn. Oldest member of our Flight, age halting magic. Her armor's made of the scales Selriona shed over time. No reason to be alarmed." He turned back to his 'patient'. "How are you feeling, my queen? Any dizziness? Nausea? Lack of emotions?"

She took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, her luminous eyes, now just a tad dimmer, gazing over Verthelion. "I feel slightly nauseous, still irritable but not as much as before."

"Good, the dizziness is normal. It means some of the corruption has been siphoned out, and your body's struggling to adapt. Anything else?"

She raised a hand to her forehead. "I _am _currently having trouble caring about... anything. Deadened, is what I should say."

He nodded. "That's a good sign, it means the process is working. Slowly, but working. As we purge more and more of the taint, you should feel less resentful and duller."

"Why is that?" asked the other dragon.

The Twilight Aspect looked at her. "Well, Lirastrasza..." He hesitated at saying her name, as if it brought bad memories. "You see, corruption, mental corruption, engraves itself onto one's soul. Cutting it out is like cutting out a part of one's soul." He looked towards Alexstrasza - both Red dragons seemed horrified. "Luckily, though, you haven't been corrupted too much. Once the corruption has been burned out, we'll get to work on healing your soul. Normally, this would be a quick process, but you're... very powerful. Your soul resists changes, and it's all I can do to burn it out one piece at a time. You should be completely recovered in four months, and uncorrupted in three."

"Four months!" she exclaimed, standing up. The temperature in the room rose sharply. All four of us took a step back. "I can not be absent from my duties for _four months!_ I am the most important dragon in history, easily the most powerful - "

"Mother!" Lirastrasza hissed. "Be calm, this is not like you."

The heat radiating from her diminished, and she sat back down like a sack, looking down. "I - you are right. My apologies."

"No need to apologize, Lifebinder," Ialion assured her. "You weren't yourself. Corruption takes a long time to purge. But Amanthe, didn't you have something to say?"

I shook my head, the gravity of the situation coming back to me. My best friend, who I'd known for two centuries - "Selriona's been kidnapped to Argus!" I blurted out. _Great_, I thought to myself. _Blunt as a brick, with all the tact of a skunk, in front of the queen of all dragons._

The dragons were all stunned. Even Ialion hadn't known just what had happened to his mom. Verthelion looked at me with wide eyes, before he whispered, "What?"

"Followers of the Burning Legion kidnapped Selriona to Argus when we were separated. She sent me a telepathic message not long ago, begging for me to find a way to save her. She told me to come tell you."

Slowly, Verthelion's expression changed. From shock, his fists tightened, and he raised one to his face. His luminous violet eyes shone, flickers of twilight flame dancing along his hands. "Those idiots," he ground out in a terrifying voice. "Just made the biggest mistake of their lives."

"But wait, what are you planning?" Ialion asked.

"Simple," he snarled. "Go to Argus. Find my mate. Rescue her. Kill any demon I see. I'll be back in a week at most."

"Whoa, whoa. Hang on," I said. "This is Argus. You sure you can handle it? And besides, do you even know how to _get_ there?"

"Oh yes. Selriona told me about the nether lines, and I've got a lot more power than she does. I can get there in a few days. And of course I can handle it." Dark blue lightning sparked along his skin, driving his point home. "I'll be back in no time."

"Now wait a minute," Lirastrasza said. "Aspect, you can't just leave Alexstrasza here! She has to be uncorrupted first, it's priority."

Alexstrasza held up a hand, and spoke in a halting voice, as if she was having trouble deciding what she wanted to say. "No... no. I do not strictly need Verthelion personally, he just speeds up the process. And if what I've overheard is right, with the iron vrykul, and his Prime Consort being kidnapped," Her voice softened on 'Prime Consort', painfully reminding me of how much she had lost over sixty thousand years. "The Burning Legion has decided to go forward withanother stage of their plan. Stopping _that_ is priority. Verthelion, you must go. I will be fine, but please do not be reckless about this."

He nodded. "Make sure not to stay cooped up in here. Get some fresh air, hunt, be open with your emotions, and above all _socialize._ The worst thing you can do is isolate yourself."

"Hang on," I said. "Verthelion, have you thought this through? What'll happen when you actually _reach_ Argus? Beyond the fact that they'll have learned from last time and have _immense_ security, you won't know where to look! By the time you find Selriona, it might be..." I forced myself to say it. It's just words, it can't be that hard. "... it might be too late."

He cursed. "Blast it. What do you suggest?"

"I'll come with you. I still have the link with her. I can use it to pinpoint her location. That, and once we get there, we'll be able to talk with her, coordinate."

He nodded. "Alright, Amanthe. You'll come with me to Argus."

"Well then I'm coming too," Ialion insisted. "I blocked your link so that distance won't stress it and cause you a migraine. But you also won't be able to use it to find Selriona. And I attuned the blockage to myself, so I'll need to be there to release it."

"Can't you release it now?" I asked.

He scoffed. "Yes, and leave you in incredible pain for until you reach Argus, leaving your focus impaired until you get close enough? I don't think so. I'm coming with you."

Verthelion nodded. "Alright, alright. Um, lets see. We'll need food, and water for the trip. Don't expect it to take too long, but Selriona's going to be hurt, she's going to be hungry and tired. And, um, healing potions. She'll be hurt, we'll need to help her, and, um, what else am I forgetting?"

"Verthelion, please," Alexstrasza said. "Calm down. It'll do nobody any good if you do not think clearly."

He took a deep breath. "Right, right. You're right. Okay, okay. _Is _there anything I'm forgetting?"

She shook her head. "No, I do not believe so. I would offer to come with you, but unfortunately my _condition_ prevents me," she said, snarling at the end before catching herself. She rose from the bed, clapping Verthelion on the shoulder with an armored hand. I noticed just how much taller her mortal form was than everyone else's, a good head over Verthelion. "I give you all my blessing." Warmth washed over me, and I felt a fire burning in my gut, surging through my body as an unlimited torrent of mana and life. "You will succeed, I know it." She turned to Lirastrasza. "Return to Wyrmrest, and call the other Aspects to here so I may commune with them. We'll set up a second party, to go after Verthelion and help if he takes longer than expected. He, though, _should_ go right away, since time is of the essence."

The Twilight Aspect nodded. "We'll succeed. If not for Selriona, then to stop the Burning Legion's plan." He sighed. "We should take more people, shouldn't we? This won't exactly be a covert operation." He shook his head. "No, no. What am I saying?" He looked at Ialion, a deranged smile forming on his lips. "We're Twilight dragons. We can make _anything_ into a covert operation. And there _will_ be the back-up team."

I sighed. "Well, I'll go look for food to bring with us. Containers too." Twilight scale helm under my arms, I curtsied to the four dragons before turning around and taking my leave. _Hang in there, Selriona_, I thought, even though she wouldn't hear me. _We're coming for you._

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><p><em><em>**Review, let me know what you think.**

**I really just... I'm choking up. How can you get choked up about writing? I'm managing it. I honestly, truly can not say enough how much each review means to me. I want to thank everyone, everyone who reviewed, favorited, alerted, whatever. dharak for being my beta, and just everyone who's stuck with me this far. This'll probably be a shorter section, and after that, well, you'll see :-). Also, I want to shout-out Dusty the Umbravita, who recently returned from a several month-long hiatus on The Obsidian Dawn. If you haven't checked out that story already, what the hell are you doing here? Go read it, honestly! **

**Until next time...**


	33. Chapter 33:Well Fuck

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Huge thanks to dharak for the advice in this chapter, as well as making an interesting observation that I will hint to in coming chapters.**

**Chapter published 1/28/13**

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><p><span>Taronar<span>

"You're not serious!" I shouted at the book. I groaned in exasperation, flopping back on my bed. I left the book splayed open, its binding falling apart from where it fell onto the ground. I covered my face with my hands, groaning into them. "I'm never gonna figure out how to cast mass burning shackles."

"Is that so?" a withered old voice called from the doorway. I was up in an instant, brushing myself off.

"Grandmother," I said hastily towards the oldest member in the place we lived. I thought I'd left that door closed? "I didn't hear you come in."

She clacked her crane, which doubled as a staff, against the ground, holding the top with both of her heavily wrinkled, deathly pale hands. She smiled at me, and I forced myself to meet the curious look in her red eyes. She hobbled over to me and sat down on my bed, moving her staff to her right hand and patting the space to her left with her spare hand. "Well, I can be quiet when I want to. So, I hear you're having trouble with mass burning shackles?"

I chuckled nervously. "I was loud about that, wasn't I?" At her look, I continued. "I can figure out mass shackles easily. Just substitute the spell into a search magic line, and feed in extra power to make it last the same length of time. Burning shackles I can do as well, simply increase the magical density of the shackles and weaken their forms so that the energy seeps into what they're latched onto. But whenever I try to combine the two they just..." I brought my hands next to each other, letting a spark of Holy Light jump between the two, forming a ball in the middle. "Clash." The ball burst into a shower of sparkles.

Anna nodded, pushing back a strand of naturally white hair from where it had fallen infront of her ancient face. "I see. I believe I know what the problem is." Without looking away from me, a massive orb of light exploded into being before me. It glowed a faint yellow, with various smaller lines criss-crossing inside it, and tiny symbols were hidden within the lines. I recognized it easily. It was the spellform for a mass shackle.

"See this strand here?" she asked, and one flared. "That's the power line. When the power runs out, the shackles vanish. You know this." The lines in the orb changed, the symbols flexing and twisting into new forms, new connections, until the spellform for burning holy shackles stood before me. "Burning shackles use up their power quickly. You trade either duration, or strength, or mana, or any combination, for causing harm. Not that I could imagine why you would ever need them." She shook her head. "But anyway, your problem is simply interference between the additional power used to make them afflict multiple enemies, and the rapid loss of magic needed to make them burn. Your spell burns out too fast, essentially."

"So, what?" I asked, looking at one of the fel-green lights that provided illumination to the room I shared with my older sister. "I need to place more power into it, is that what you're saying?"

She shook her head. "No no, not at all. Watch," she explained, gesturing to the orb. As I stared at it, several of the lines morphed, linking into each other. New ones formed, creating a bundle...

"Oh!" I exclaimed, comprehension dawning on me. "I just need to implement draining into the burning of the shackles so that they will drawn on the lost life essence of their victim to fuel themselves."

She nodded. "Indeed. But I don't understand _why_ you would ever want to know such an ability. Better to know healing, or solidifying."

I chuckled. "Grandmother, you're the _only_ one who can perform solidifying like that. I mean, the most we can make are - "

"Shackles?" she asked, a smile tugging at the corner of her lips as she gave me a look that said _Yeah, I'm the best. Don't forget that._ "But if you don't mind me asking, why?"

I shrugged. "Well, if enemies of the Burning Legion ever face us, I want to be able to give them what for, you know?"

She rolled her eyes. "Honestly, what enemies? We live on Argus, the safest place in the known universe. The Burning Legion has cleansed all possible threats for galaxies around."

"Well, just in case. You know?"

She rolled her eyes. "Ah, you have so much to learn, grandson. Come, you've been cooped up in your room for a week! Why don't you go see Isaberalar, you two are _quite_ friendly," she said, nudging me with an elbow.

"Grandmother!" I hissed indignantly, my face burning. "We're just friends!"

She smiled. "Sure you are. I thought the same when I was your age."

"What did your parents say about that?" I asked.

She froze, raising her left hand to her forehead, the other still clasping the staff. "I... do not remember that far back. Most I can do is when I was fifteen. No, I can't remember them. From what I've been told, they contracted a rare disease and perished. So tragic." She sighed. "Ah, nevermind me." She waved me away. "Go on, go! Socialize. Besides, we're getting lunch in a few minutes."

"What about you?"

"Ah, I'm old. I'll just rest here a few minutes and then be on my way for lunch as well."

I nodded and departed, opening the door and leaving grandmother sitting on my bed. I walked through the spoke of our home that lead to the central chamber. Once there, I dipped my hands into the water channel and splashed some of it onto my face. A dozen others were already there, watching, waiting for the food containers to drop. I spotted my parents, standing side by side, talking idly with each other. My skin crawled uncomfortably when I thought of them. We'd been growing more and more distant ever since I'd turned fourteen, and now, four years later, we hardly ever spoke to each other. It didn't exactly make me feel good about myself, and guilt twisted my heart every time I thought about it. I wondered, did they feel the same?

I looked away hastily when they looked my way, pretending I hadn't noticed. I kept moving around the perimeter of the central hub, looking up at the tiny green circle in the roof that led to the outside of Argus, where we would receive our second of three meals for the day.

"Oof!" said both I and someone else as I collided into them, my eyes not having been focused on where I was going. I stumbled and got my balance, snapping my gaze over to her. "Oh, Isaberalar. Hi."

She braced herself against a wall, flicking a spot of dark brown hair out of her face. "Hey. Clumsy today?"

"Nah, I was just thinking."

"Oh, about what?"

"Well, my grandmother was helping me with mass burning shackles. I was just thinking about what she said, that it's unneeded to learn such a spell." In truth, I _hadn't_ been thinking about that at the time I ran into her.

"Well, she's right, you know. I mean, why? We have all we could ever want in this place." A series of _plops_ sounded to my right. "Like here." We walked over to the food containers. Already, the others were scooping them up to bring to the others that hadn't come themselves, who'd elected to stay in their rooms or in the halls. Parents, children, spouses. I picked up four of the containers, then remembered that Anna said she'd come to pick them up herself, and placed down two of them. Isaberalar continued. "The demons give us everything we need out of the goodness of their hearts. Food, water, shelter from the conditions outside. Why even bother learning it?"

I nodded, seeing her point. "Yeah, you're right. I'm being silly." I peeled off the cover of one of the containers, picking up a handful of the tiny green orbs and popping them into my mouth. "Where do you want to hang out?" I asked, chewing and then swallowing.

"Well, I was thinking we could go play something by the exit?"

I smiled. "Sounds fun. Let's go." I turned around, heading off towards it, still picking at my food. Behind me, I heard her doing the same. Before too long we reached the corridor leading to outside, a shimmering green barrier preventing the toxic environment outside from seeping in. Through it, I could see hundreds of assorted demons. Strange. Usually Mal'ganis had thousands of members of the Burning Legion assigned to guarding us. It made me wonder just who they were protecting us from. Their armies traveled the universe, seeking out the greatest of evils and putting them down for the greater good. How many evils were left, I wondered? How many could pose a threat to our guardians?

The demons rarely interacted with us, due to differing bodies. Where we could thrive was toxic to them, and vice versa. Therefor, they had built our home to protect us from Argus's climate. And what a home it was! Friends, family, food and water. I'd never known anything less, but just one look outside could tell me how fortunate we were to be in the Burning Legion's realm. They had only two rules. No leaving, and _no_ using the Light on them. Which made sense as well - humans naturally had powers over the Light, demons over darkness. Just as we couldn't stand each other's habitat, we couldn't bear each other's magic either.

"So," she asked, picking out of the sweets container she'd gotten, instead of the green pebbles. She plopped one into her mouth, leaning against the wooden wall. She closed her eyes and gently hummed in delight. "What do you wanna play?"

I finished up the green pebbles, and the shadow container vanished into thin air. "I don't know, maybe some rock paper scissors?"

She groaned. "You know I can't beat you in that!"

I smiled mischievously. "Well, what better way to learn than to play against the master?"

She groaned, swallowing the last of the sugary nuggets. The container for those vanished and she started on the green grains, while I started on the food she'd just finished. "Fine, fine. Let's play, then."

I held out a fist, as did she. My mouth was full, as was hers, so we counted out in silence. Alright. She knew I always went rock, she'd know that by now. She would choose paper, so I would choose scissors. However, she knew I was tricky, so _she_ would choose rock to beat scissors. I chose paper. So did she.

I frowned, swallowing the food in my mouth. "Hmm. Two out of three then," I said. Clearly I'd overestimated her. She knew I just chose paper. She would think I thought she was picking scissors to beat me, so she would choose rock. I chose paper again.

"...scissors, shoot," she finished, showing off her fist to my flat hand. "Damn you!"

I smiled wickedly. "Two out of three, Isaberalar." We held out our fists again and I began counting. However, in my mind thoughts were racing. I chose paper, and she would be cautious. She would think I thought she was choosing scissors to beat me, so she would choose rock again. However, she knew that would be a repeat of what just happened, so she would choose scissors to beat my 'paper'. I showed a fist.

The exasperated cry that tore out of her throat was music to my ears. "Damn you! Damn you! Damn you! How do you do that?"

I shrugged innocently, finishing off the last of my food. "Wew, yourw jus tat pwediwcawe," I said through a full mouth.

"Oh go 'predictable' yourself."

I just gave her an easygoing shove and swallowing the sweet candies in my mouth. "You're just jealous that - " Something caught the corner of my eye, something incredibly tall, with wings. They wore dark green armor, with two horns curling out of his forehead, and black claws for fingers. I caught myself and bowed. "Mal'ganis, what brings you here?"

The dreadlord smiled down at me. "I need to speak with your people. All of you. Go gather the others and have them sent to the middle. I bring news of dire importance."

I nodded. "Of course." I turned around to my companion, who had just finished her food, and motioned down the hall. "You go that way, I'll go the other way."

"Right. We'll meet back up in the middle."

We left Mal'ganis, going through each of the rooms and telling everyone what was happening. Before long, all four dozen of us were gathered in a few rows in the central chamber. Mal'ganis stood before us, wings flared out, occasionally folding in and back out. He flexed his claws by his side in agitation. "Is this everyone?" he finally asked in his rumbling baritone. After a few confirmations, he continued. "As you all know, our purpose in the Burning Legion is to travel the universe, finding evil wherever it lies and purging it so that the good in the cosmos may thrive. Usually, this is simple for us to do. However, we have recently encountered a rather... _vexing_ world by the name of Azeroth. We have never encountered such a sinister place. It is absolutely infested with creatures known as 'Old Gods', beings with a penchant for evil the likes of which we have never seen. Every time we have attempted to invade the world and remove the evil there, its denizens have rebuked us, time and time again, and now have even spread their taint to a _second_ world known as Draenor, shattering it into pieces."

A series of gasps filled our crowd. This news was incredibly disturbing to me. A world whose inhabitants could actually _break a planet into pieces? _And they were _winning _against our guardians and protectors? What if they got here?

Mal'ganis continued. "We have been trying to purify Azeroth for centuries, but we have not told you so that you would not worry. Sargeras has fallen in this conflict." Dead silence. Sargeras, the greatest good that the universe had ever known, _fallen?_ What were these... these... _creatures_ like? "Luckily, he fell by infusing his spirit into one of the denizens known as Medivh. The body was destroyed, but it wasn't his own body. Sadly, that was lost as well, however." He chuckled. "However, we have spent the better part of the last two hundred years formulating a plan to get him back. We didn't want to tell you, lest we get your hopes up for nothing. However, we have everything we need. All we need now is your help. Please, follow me," he finished, turning around and waving us after him. We followed, until he briefly paused at the barrier, which had mysteriously vanished, exposing the outside world to us. There was not a demonic guard in sight.

"We must travel a short way's through Argus. Do not worry, in such short exposure the climate will not harm you. We will be back in your realm of comfort momentarily." With that, Mal'ganis began marching onwards, away from the mountains that I'd seen through the exit countless times. The clouds above us were dark and heavy, rumbling with hidden bolts of lightning. I stared in awe at the construction of fel reavers around me, eredar channeling magic into weapons to enchant them. After a mass-teleportation by Mal'ganis, we arrived in a vast plain with thousands of fel guards, doomguards, shivarra and more forming an impassable sea of demons, seeming to form a ring around something in the middle.

As Mal'ganis led us through them, the sea parted. A succubus smiled warmly at me, revealing her fangs, and winked. A towering eredar nodded as we passed. I noticed four towers around us, around a central point where there was a construct of obsidian. It was a building, I realized. Cylindrical near the base, and a dome near the top. A ramp led up one of its sides to a door. It was to this door Mal'ganis brought us. We filed in behind the dreadlord, who had to press his wings tight against his body to fit.

Inside we stood on a black obsidian balcony, elevated a few meters above the ground. On the floor, in the very middle of the room, was a pedestal engraved with pictures of Sargeras purging evil worlds. There was something spherical in the middle of it, clamped in place. Laying next to it was what looked like an enormous metal person, albeit with long, braided hair and dull symbols on its skin. A little ways off the to the side were four eredar maintaining what I could see to be entrapment spells on a chained... _thing._

It was enormous - just its head was as tall as me, to say nothing of the giant horns that stretched up from behind its eyes, before nearly touching. It was a shade of deep purple that made shivers crawl up and down my spine, with enormous wings, coupled with three talons on each one, three curved black claws on each of its four legs, and a muscular tail that ended in a spiked club. It looked to be in a bad shape, with dozens of chains criss-crossings its body, connected to spikes digging into its flesh. Its... _scales... _were splattered in purple stains that I assumed were dried blood, and it flicked its eyes at us nervously, the pupils turning dangerously thin. Its breathing began to speed up.

"What... _is_ that?" I heard my little brother ask.

"That," Mal'ganis said, motioning towards the slightly transparent creature. "Is one of the creatures from Azeroth. A dragon, one of the most dangerous species. Do not worry, it can do you no harm. All its mana has been drained." He jumped over the balcony and landed with a gentle flap of his wings. "Come." Without further word we did, using our powers to levitate down the fall. "This device in here is a magic amplifier we liberated from Draenor. We need your assistance."

"For what?" I asked.

He smiled. "I'm glad you asked. You see, the spirit of Sargeras floats, somewhere out in the Twisting Nether. We require you all to channel a ressurection spell into the magic amplifier, in order to pull his spirit back to Argus. Once here, he will enter the metallic body there. To keep his spirit tethered, he will absorb the life essence of the dragon there." As he said this, the dragon began to thrash, a pained gurgle coming from its throat. I couldn't help but feel sorry for the creature, however evil it was. Soon, though, it stopped thrashing and laid still, its eyes glazing over, doing little more than twitching a paw or a wing every now and again. What was that all about?

Ignoring the dragon's attempt for freedom, Anna stepped forward, clacking her staff on the ground. "Such a ressurection, even with all the resources you've provided us, will take days. We can not sustain a spell for that long."

The demon waved a hand. "We have already considered that. Hidden in the base of the pedestal is a crystal that will keep you all nourished, rested, and... ahem... relieved. You will be able to spend all your time reviving Lord Sargeras."

My grandmother nodded, looking at the rest of us. "Well then, let us get started."

"A warning," Mal'ganis cautioned. "Once you begin, Kil'jaeden shall come to place a spell on the building you are in. All inside will be silenced in the use of spells that are not holy _or_ draining, so that the dragon's mana can be kept low. In addition, it will be impossible to leave until Lord Sargeras has been revived entirely, as in, he is tethered permanently to the iron body we have provided. Once you begin, you will not be able to stop. Are you certain you wish to begin?"

Murmurs of agreement filled the air. I smiled. This was such an honor. To be _called_ upon to revive the greatest good in reality... _me!_

"Then I shall not keep you. Oh, before I forget." Mal'ganis walked over to the dragon, and I noticed something around its neck I hadn't seen before under all the chains. A bronze chain looped around its neck, with a disk made of the same metal dangling off it. Half of it was covered by a shallow glass dome, with what appeared to be liquefied Light beneath it. Anger flared in me. This _beast_ has the _nerve _to use the Light for its own malevolent purposes?! He snapped it off and placed it in Anna's hands, the dragon keening mournfully.

"This is a capacitor. Not a powerful one, but its energies may aid you. You can drain it for extra Light if you need to."

She nodded. "Thank you, Mal'ganis. Well, let us begin."

We formed a ring around the amplifier, with Anna holding the capacitor. There were too many of us to fit around it, so we ended up forming multiple rings. I was somewhere in the middle, along with Isaberalar. Mal'ganis left the building, and I heard something whirl, the inside of the building covered in a light green glow similar to the force field that surrounded our home. The door closed, and we collectively focused.

I began to channel my power into the amplifier, weaving the lines of ressurection and revival that I knew like the back of my hand, that _all_ of us knew, since it was one of the first spells any of us ever learned. There was no doubt, I could do this. The Light had no limits, as did the Shadow. I believedI could revive Sargeras with the aid of all the people I'd known in my life, and therefor I could.

A deafening blast pushed back my black hair, but I kept focusing. The amplifier vibrated strongly, but was held in place, shooting a blast of condensed ressurection magic into the sky. The yellow beam was thick and vibrant, so powerful it shattered the ceiling and greatly expanded the hole in the top before flying into the sky, aimed by my mind towards wherever the Titan's spirit rested. I could feel my magic draining, but just as Mal'ganis said, something hidden in the pedestal before us replenished my energy faster than I could deplete it.

It took a few hours, but I could feel the spell take hold on the soul of Sargeras, and begin tugging it back. It was like pulling a mountain, but we were making progress. At this rate, who knew how long it would take? Days, weeks, months? But it would work. The Burning Legion had placed its trust in us. It had given us a home, shelter, food, life. We owed them everything - this was but a small part of how we could show our gratitude.

Behind us, the dragon twitched in pain.

* * *

><p><strong>Please review, let me know what you think! It really helps me grow as a writer.<strong>


	34. Chapter 34:Hasty Pursuit

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Huge thanks to dharak for being my beta!**

**Chapter published 2/10/13. **

* * *

><p>Amanthe<p>

We were only on the next fallen world for ten seconds before Verthelion was trying - again - to teleport us further along. He curled up his massive body, arcane light flowing along his scales. It fizzled and he relented, gasping for breath, before trying again, Alexstrasza's blessing of vitality having expired some time ago.

"Aspect," I said, the disorientation already fading away. He continued trying, but each time he grew more and more exhausted. Each time he made less progress. "Verthelion!"

He turned to face me, reptilian eyes narrowing. "_What?!_"

I didn't shrink back in the face of his anger. "You need to rest. Not even you can get us all the way to Argus in one go. You have to take a break."

"No!" he shouted. "I can do this! Selriona's counting on me, I have to get there _now!_"

"Father," Ialion said beside me, also in his true form. "Just relax. You'll be in no shape to help anyone if you're half dead by the time we reach Argus."

"But she could be dying at any moment!" he protested. "There's not a second to waste!"

"I know, I know!" Ialion screeched. "But the more you try to go on when you don't have the mana to do so, the longer it'll take to get there! We'll reach broodmother sooner if you rest."

He sighed, stopping his futile attempts at teleportation. As incredibly powerful as Aspects were, even they had their limits, and Verthelion had reached his. "Alright, you're right." He sat down with a tremor, wings sagging against his ground. "You're right. I'm being an idiot. At least we made a lot of progress. It's only our first day of travel and we're... here. Wherever 'here' is."

"I remember this world," I said. "From when she rescued me." It was a vast salt desert, with a few mountains in the distance. The world seemed to be frozen in the twilight hours, since the huge red sun was neither rising nor setting. "If I had to guess, I'd say we're about halfway there. Still, the closer we get, the harder it'll be to go on." I thought about it for a moment. "On the plus side, when we're on Argus, you'll probably be able to teleport us directly back to Azeroth with all your power. Or at least a good ways there."

He nodded, slowly laying down onto his stomach. The sheer scale of the Twilight Aspect was unimaginable. Just regular dragons were enormous, but Verthelion's horns were three times longer than I, his head of similar scale. "Good, good. I'm just going to... go to sleep." He started to close his vibrant teal eyes, but stopped halfway. "You still have the supplies, right?" he asked.

I tapped the bag on my back, filled with water and food. "Got it."

"Good, good." His eyes closed again. "I'll... need the water... later." With that, the Aspect of the Twilight Dragonflight gave in to exhaustion.

I laid down, arranging the bag to be my pillow. I could catch some sleep in the meantime. However, a shifting mass of scales sat down next to me, wings cocooned against his back and tail curled around his forelegs.

"Haven't seen you in a while," Ialion said.

I sighed. "Yeah, it's been a while." I propped myself up on my elbows, looking up at him. Normally, dragons would use mortal forms so that 'lesser' races wouldn't feel uncomfortable, but I'd been in the company of the giant reptiles for so long it didn't bother me anymore. By the Light, had it really been two hundred years? It felt like much less, yet at the same time much more. "Guess we've been busy these past couple of decades."

He nodded. "There's been a lot going on, fighting off the Legion whenever we can."

"And allowing the Twilight's Hammer to have a longer leash to make infiltrating them easier on top of that. So, how have you been?"

He laid down on his stomach, wings still tight against his back. He wagged his tail slowly along the ground. "Well, pretty good. I mean, you know. After I grew up from being a drake I went to go watch the Dark Portal with Asphyxion for a couple decades. Charliona and I had a brood a few decades after that."

"She's the... shrinekeeper, right?"

"Yeah, she is."

"Hmm, don't think I've ever visited the shrine. I think I'll have to change that."

"If we survive this, that is," he said cheerfully, looking at me.

I swatted him in the snout, causing him to pull back and blink sharply a few times. "_Of course_ we're going to survive! I mean, what? Do you think that the Legion's going to have some sort of magic 'you can't leave' field around Selriona, one so strong not even an Aspect would be able to break?"

"Yeah, you're right. But still, I'm worried..."

"Me too, me too. Selriona's my oldest friend. Literally. I have to go save her. I mean, I owe it to her, after all she's done for me over the years."

"You've done quite a bit too, Amanthe. You've destroyed dozens of cultist camps, assassinated more than a few of the Legion's messengers and just all around done a stellar job carrying out our charge."

I huffed. "Well, I _am_ the oldest one here," I said, smiling. "I'd be surprised if I wasn't good."

He rolled his eyes. "You're only about three decades older than me. Not much, Amanthe."

It was my turn to roll my eyes. "Yeah yeah. So, what've you been doing these past few decades? Besides just watching the Dark Portal?"

Tension seemed to bleed out of his body. "Ah yes. Well, after a few decades of _that_, Plutolion was kind enough to take over for me. You'll never guess what spot I got."

"Mulgore?"

He shook his head. "Not _that_ lucky, I'm afraid. But still... the Eversong Woods is very nice. Nice and warm, the air smells so nice too." He closed his eyes and purred in remembered comfort. "It was wonderful." He opened his eyes again. "So, what've you been up to?"

I sighed. "Well, you know. Jason and I got married after a few more years." Selriona had let me take as much time I wanted. Her reasoning was that since she stopped watching whenever she mothered a brood, so should I. I took a deep breath before continuing, this topic always left a bitter taste in my mouth. "We had a daughter, Leila. She was so smart, she was an architect and an engineer. Worked on the Alliance aerial fleet."

"Sounds productive," Ialion said. "What happened?"

I swallowed hard. "She got old and died. Happens to my race all the time," I said with forced detachment.

"But, you gave Jason the age-halting spell, what about - "

"That alone was pushing it!" I snapped. "I mean, can you _imagine_ if that got out to the public? There's a reason why mages who discover those kind of things don't go around sharing it with every beggar they come across. The overpopulation, the food scarcity, starvation, it would be catastrophic. Please, just _drop_ it." I had to choose between my heart and my mind, and as much as it killed me, I _had_ to go with what my brain told me was the smartest option.

His toxic green eyes softened, the slit pupils growing almost circular. "Right, sorry." He relaxed his wings and lowered his head onto the ground. "Should probably sleep while we can. Gonna be a long few days ahead of us."

I nodded. "Right." I leaned back, resting my head against the 'pillow' that held our food and drink. I was about to fall asleep when a deep, discordant resonant sound came from my right, rousing me from my almost-slumber. I frowned, then relaxed again. The same rumbling snore, albeit _much_ louder sounded from my left. I groaned inwardly.

_Damn dragons._

* * *

><p>The indigo blob was moving. It moved around awkwardly on the desert world, trying to curl itself up into a smaller blob. Next to it, a <em>very<em> large indigo blob had compressed itself into a smaller one and was guzzling water from what had served as my pillow last 'night'.

My head felt like a torch had been taken to it, and my eyes had cotton stuck in them. I was also dizzy, irritable, had difficulty balancing, calling magic, just about everything that came with lack of sleep. I'd yet to bring it up, though, because I was also chewing on magically preserved deer meat that Verthelion had cooked with his shadow breath. Of course, afterward, I had to purify it with the Light so that I could actually_ eat _it without becoming horribly ill due to the shadow essence. The indigo blob curled around itself before me had already eaten his share, using a mortal form so as not to use up _too_ much food.

I swallowed another chunk of meat, glaring at the indigo blob as best I could to keep him curled up. Sometimes my vision focused itself for a few seconds, letting me make out Ialion's scales and horns, but most of the time he was a uniform blob on a vast white plain with a dark sky - which did _not_ help me stay awake - and a red blob of a sun.

"So," Verthelion asked, the various pitches of his voice blending into each other, as if even noise was blurry to my ears. "Is everyone ready to go?"

"As ready as I'll ever be," I groaned. "Considering I got almost no sleep thanks to you two."

"So that's why you're glaring at me?" asked Ialion, momentarily coming into focus. "What did I do?"

I fixed him with a flat stare. "Has anyone ever told you that you two snore?" I asked, looking at Verthelion. I was careful not to look him in the eyes, though. I didn't know the Aspect _that_ well, and his species had a certain thing with eye contact. Twilight dragons spent the most time out of all Flights associating with mortals, so Ialion knew not to take it as a challenge. Verthelion himself, however, spent most of his time in Grim Batol, organizing the other members of his Flight and keeping The Records in order. So he did _not_ know that mortal eye contact wasn't a challenge.

Verthelion raised a brow. "I snore?" He didn't seem very insulted, more curious, as if I'd just told him that his favorite prey animal was learning to wield magic. "I never noticed."

"And no-one ever told you? You've never slept next to someone, kept them awake, and they told you the next day?"

Ialion shrugged his wings. "Well, no, not really. You're the first."

"What about your mates?"

"We don't sleep as often as you do, Amanthe," Verthelion said. "And there's no set cycle on our sleep anyway. Just at least once a week. It's rare for two dragons to ever sleep at the same time, let alone in the same cavern."

"And when it does happen?" I asked.

"I've never been told," they both said at the same time, before Ialion continued. "Sorry for keeping you awake."

I rubbed my eyes, easing the stinging sensation on them but turning the world blurry again. "Whatever. Are we going on?"

Verthelion nodded. "Yes. Get close to me." Both Ialion and I stalked over to Verthelion. The bag containing all our food and water was by his feet, and Ialion shifted to an orcish form as his father closed his eyes. Almost seamlessly, we faded into the twilight realm. Then the Aspect opened his eyes, and everything was silver. Verthelion's power of teleportation felt like something along the lines of a hammer being slammed into my back to push me forward, except it was slamming into every centimeter of my body, and continuously. Add to that the ever-increasing nether winds opposing us, it was _quite_ painful.

The moment we arrived in the next world, the first thing that struck me was the _cold. _The disorientation from the teleportation was already fading into memory, but I noticed very strongly that it was fucking _cold._

I hugged my arms to my body. "Ugh, I think Northrend's warmer than this hells-hole. Titans damn it." I looked up. It was night, the few stars visible through the twilight fog twinkling sadly down at us. This world in particular was much the same as all the others. Vast, empty plains of dark gray stone without a defining characteristic in the world. The air was thin, though, making me light-headed. I could only imagine what it would be for the dragons in their true forms. Verthelion was on his knees, taking in great gulps of air.

"Yeah. Yeah it's... it's really cold." He kept panting for a few minutes. "Titans, Titans. I need to rest." He smacked his lips together for a moment. "No, no. I need water." He crawled over to the bag containing all our remaining food and water, opening it and taking another water skin out before guzzling it down. It was... unnerving, to say the least, to see someone that powerful brought low like that. The mists of the twilight realm began to swirl and plunged into him, tendrils of shadow and fog forming out of the air and flying towards him. They rotated along his body for a few seconds like a tornado before plunging in, no doubt revitalizing him. Why hadn't he thought to do that earlier? Was he really that worried? I was out of my mind too. After all, this was _Selriona_ who'd been captured. I tried to keep my mind away from what would happen if we failed - no, we're not failing! It's not an option.

I sighed, also grabbing a flask to drink from, as did Ialion, who also got a slab of stag meat. Verthelion stopped channeling energy from the twilight realm, his mana no doubt restored. I took a few gulps and looked over at him, all three of us sitting down. "So, ready to teleport again?"

He shook his head. "No, not for a while yet." He took a few more gulps of air. "My mana's back, but I'm still so tired. Even within our realm, I'm exhausted. Titans, how did Selriona do this?"_  
><em>

I shrugged. "She took it one world at a time, I guess, while you're going several dozen at a time."

"Nothing else is... acceptable." We lapsed into silence for a moment. "She saved my life during the Cataclysm." He sighed deeply. "Twice, at least. Once from Ysera, at Hyjal. Another time when I passed out inside a Mawed One, in Dragonblight. I mean, I've watched her tail several times too, don't get me wrong. But I still feel like I owe her."

Ialion sighed. "She's your mate. Of course you do. I mean, if something happened to Charliona, or to Teraliona, I don't know what I'd do. Vice versa if something happened to me, I guess."

"We're all very worried about her," I said, stroking one of my hands with the other, the armor on them rubbing against itself. "Okay, let's make some guesses. How are we gonna do this? I mean, we can't very well just _rush_ into Argus without a plan."

It was Verthelion's turn to sigh. "Well, there's not much we know. All we know for certain is that she was kidnapped, and is being held somewhere on the planet. That's about it."

"Well," Ialion said. "After last time, I don't think that security there is going to be as light as broodmother says it was. They'll be ready for us, maybe even _waiting_ for us."

I grunted. "Then we'll have to disappoint them. They _can't_ get into the twilight realm, not unless she... lets... them." Silence descended on us. "You don't think they'll do that, do you? Force her to open a portal to the twilight realm?"

Verthelion shivered. "Titans, I hope not. That's our greatest advantage in, well, _anything_, and to have it compromised? That would be unthinkable."

"I don't think that'll be a problem," Ialion said. "After all, what could they _do_ in there? They have no means to get anybody out of the twilight realm, and once we rescue Selriona, they won't be able to get anyone else in either. There'd be no point." He laced his fingers together - they were turning red in the cold - and extended his arms, cracking his fingers before relaxing. "What I'm more worried about is the group that's supposed to come after us. Who do you think it's gonna be?"

I shrugged. "Hard to tell. I don't think any of the other Aspects will be coming. I mean, no disrespect Verthelion, but it's strategically not a good idea for you to come to Argus. I mean, if something were to happen to us, not only would our Flight be leaderless, but the Heart of Twilight would be in the hands of the Legion. You're powerful, yeah. Very powerful, but it's a big risk to go there."

"I _have_ to go. I can't just sit back and do nothing while she's suffering in the claws of the demons!"

I raised my hands in surrender. "I never said you shouldn't. But like I said, having two Aspects come to Argus is just foolhardy. Others will be coming with us."

"One of my Flight to be sure," Verthelion said. "They'll need to be able to sneak around to find us, and in a place like Argus? Not possible otherwise. Beyond that, it's hard to tell." He groaned in aggravation. "I wish we had more time to make a plan! But there's just no time to spare. Who knows what they're doing to her? What they're using her _for? _If we let them have their way..."

"We're all doomed," I said, taking in a deep breath as my head swam from the thin air. "Okay, hang on. How would they even reach us? I mean, unless they do deign to risk another Aspect, they won't have the power to catch up with us. They'd arrive too late, by weeks if Selriona was anything to take notes by."

He shook his head. "No, I don't think so. Our passing through, it's sort of 'opening' up the pathway. Making it easier to go towards Argus, at least for a short time. There's probably much easier ways to get to Argus that the Legion has, but only they have them."

"Like how they got Selriona to Argus so quickly in the first place," I pointed out. "Would be nice if we could put an end to that. But at least we know that our backup _won't_ be doomed to 'too little too late'." I sighed, rubbing my hands together and breathing into them. "We have to hurry. But we also can't be reckless. Okay, let's do this. Say we get to Argus. Ialion unblocks the link, and I use it to find Selriona. We go to her, and then what? We're going to have to find a way off of Argus, and with all the instability of the region, _and_ under fire as we're going to be, just portaling away won't work."

Ialion and Verthelion both pondered this, before the latter spoke. "Well, what about an anchor point? On, say, Xoroth? That's the world right before, yes? We place one there, go to Argus, rescue her, then portal right back to Argus. I _highly_ doubt they'll be able to interrupt my casting."

"And if a demon lord shows up?" Ialion asked. "Like, say, Kil'jaeden? He won't be weakened like he was at the Sunwell, he'll have some serious punch behind his spells. He'd be able to stop you from escaping."

"Maybe we can split up," I said. "There's bound to be a huge army. They _know_ what our Flight can do, and while they can't enter the twilight realm on their own, they'll be able to keep us from doing so as we get close to her. I'm not an expert on magic, but I _do_ know that they can force us to rescue her in the physical realm."

"What do you suggest?" Ialion asked.

"We split up. We get as close as we can through the twilight realm, then Verthelion enters the physical realm and draws the majority of the defenders away. Meanwhile, Ialion and I will sneak in and rescue her. We meet up somewhere - we'll be able to decide once we see the situation up close - and portal away."

Verthelion considered this. "Maybe, maybe. We'll need to see just how large the defending army is, of course, but I feel I can take whatever they'll throw at me. I'm immune to shadow magic, which negates a large part of their arsenal, and for everything else, I am _very_ powerful. They'll be packed close together; just my breath alone would be devastating. Hmm, yes. I think that might work. But first, let's get to Argus itself. All the plans in the world won't matter if the Legion has something wildly out of balance up their hides."

"You're right. You _should_ rest, Verthelion. Unless you feel up to teleporting us again?"

He bit his lip, seemingly conflicted between his desire to get to Argus as soon as dragonly possible, and the knowledge that he _needed_ to rest to keep up his strength for when we _did_ arrive. After a few minutes of internal debate, he reclined on the cold ground and closed his eyes, succumbing to his exhaustion in moments. I wasn't tired, having slept less than an hour ago. Neither was Ialion, who was even more caught up on his sleep, being a dragon.

I sighed, and he spoke. "And so begins the wait..."

* * *

><p>I hadn't seen Xoroth before.<p>

Once upon a time, Selriona had come here with Anna's parents, Layalith and Orande, but on the return trip she skipped over Xoroth, the nether winds of the Burning Legion's homeworld propelling her away from the cursed place. The skies were overcast with rust, and the ground seemed to be caked with blood and lava, tiny fires growing in random places along the mountain chain we arrived in. The air was heavy and acrid, bitter in its taste and _weighing_ down on me, making my head hurt with the pressure. Not to mention the combustible horses running around the landscape. Luckily, with an Aspect here, they wouldn't be too much of a danger. Unfortunately, said Aspect was unconscious, having pushed himself very hard to get us this close to Argus on only our third teleportation. So it fell to Ialion and I to keep watch over the cavern we arrived in, keeping the wandering, wild and untamed dreadsteeds from noticing our presence and - accidentally or not - sounding some sort of alarm and bringing the Legion down on us. Luckily, with us all hidden within the twilight realm, this wasn't difficult in the least.

To say the least, it was boring. The cave was small and oppressive. Verthelion was passed out in the corner in his human form, arcs of twilight lightning passively arcing and crackling along his pale skin and purple robes. Ialion laid on his stomach in his true form, ready to engulf the tunnel in the unlikely occurrence that something else came into our plane of existence. My armor was against his right flank, guarded by a giant, leathery wing. Finally, I couldn't stand it anymore. The air was hot, heavy, and the cave was small and _certainly_ in enemy territory, since it was covered in red mist. I needed to move.

I stood up from where I laid against an oddly smooth wall. "I'm going to take a walk. I'm going to get claustrophobic if I don't."

He turned his massive head towards me, one rear tusk extended in curiosity. "You sure you can find your way back? I mean, it _is_ kinda uniform out there."

"I'm not going far, _mom_, just a little jog around the cave entrance. I'll be right back, calm down."

He nodded, turning back to look up the winding path of the tunnel. It was circular and ridged, like something had burrowed into the mountain. "Okay. I'll be right here, waiting."

It took me a few minutes to reach the surface, looking about Xoroth in disgusted awe, like when you look at a horrible gyrocopter accident - you want to look away, but you can't. Beyond the obvious purple tint and fog, and the long trails of red mist that were roaming dreadsteeds, Xoroth was pretty uniform, at least where we were located on it. Giant mountains stretching in all directions as far as the eye can see, like a giant had taken the crust of Xoroth and just _crumpled_ it like paper. The clouds were red, with cracks of white shining through.

I took a few minutes to walk around the hole in our mountainside, sometimes sitting down and reaching for my toes. I never could _quite_ get there, however hard I tried. I jogged a few laps around a self-imposed circle, the thick atmosphere weighing me down all the while. When I was done exercising, I was panting and sweating, not helped at all by the fact that Xoroth is _hot,_ even within the weather-diminishing twilight realm. I clambered back into the cave, feeling oddly light, the pleasurable buzz of recent exercise heightening my senses as I made my way back to Ialion and Verthelion, the latter of whom was still out cold.

I leaned against the wall. Ialion had shifted positions and was now on his back, looking at the tunnel upside-down, wings flared out, tail coiled on the ground, and paws dangling uselessly in the air. He twisted his head around, still upside down, to look at where I sat down. It was a movement that looked, on the whole, incredibly awkward. "Hey," he said listlessly.

"Hey," I returned, before glancing over to Verthelion's body, so still I could have thought him dead if not for the steady rising and falling of his chest. "Any idea when he's gonna wake up?"

He shook his head. "Could be anytime. He pushed himself very hard. Maybe a day or two. Father is an Aspect, he'll recover quickly."

I nodded, "Hmm. What do you think about the red fog? Legion waiting for us?"

"Probably. If I had to guess, they figured out how broodmother got there last time and decided to block off that path, without fully understanding _how_ the twilight realm works, not knowing we can just go _past_ them."

"I was thinking the same thing." We spent the rest of the time period waiting for the Aspect to regain consciousness for the final push to Argus, while also creating an anchor point just outside so that we could have the option to portal here from Argus directly. We chatted idly to pass the time, catching up on what had been going on in each other's lives. As the day wore on, the land outside became darker as night fell on Xoroth, the sun setting behind the perpetual cover of ruby clouds. At around that time, I was beginning to nod off. I let my holy magic briefly flare inside my mouth, cleaning my teeth, and laid back against the smooth stone walls. They were so warm they were like a warm bath, making my eyelids grow heavier and heavier until they slammed shut.

The next moment I was blinking, suddenly awake. My internal clock, nowhere near as accurate as a dragon's, was going haywire. How long had I been asleep?

"How long was I asleep?" I asked a still-awake Ialion.

He grunted once, getting up from his sides. He groaned, stretching out his wings, before answering. "A few hours. You woke up just in time, actually, I think father will be waking up soon. He's been stirring recently." As if to accentuate his point, a sleepy groan came from the deceptively human figure huddled at the back of the cave. "We should arrive at Argus before the sun sets. Well, before it gets dark again anyway. Don't know about the _sun._"

"Neither do I."

"Mrrr," came a sleepy reply. Our heads snapped over to Verthelion, raising himself up on his hands. He pulled himself into a sitting position, then knelt on one knee and rose up to his full height. I realized just how tall he was. Not so tall I had to crane my neck, and _certainly_ not as tall as the Dragonqueen's downright intimidating posture, but my eyes were at his mouth, forcing me to glance up to meet his eyes - something that I was not interested in doing lest I provoke my Aspect. After rubbing his eyes and making sure he was awake, yawning a few times, he nodded.

"Well," Verthelion said, shadows and mist surging into him and restoring him. "Time to finish the trip."

"Don't you want something to eat first? To drink?" I asked. "You've been out a while."

He shook his head. "No, I can eat when I'm on Argus, while you're using the link to find Selriona. Waste less time that way. Come on, get close to me." We did, and once more, arcane light engulfed Verthelion, pulling us seemingly up. It only lasted for a few seconds, with how close we were to Argus, but the pressure made me feel like I was being squashed into paste. Then, just as quickly as it started, it ended.

Argus was as I remembered. Dark, blackened stone, and thick, impenetrable ash clouds. However, that was all that was familiar to me, because we were on top of a mountain and the clouds were below us, a sea surrounding our island of land. Above me, the sky was a bright blue, brighter than anything I'd ever seen before. It wasn't nearly as hot as Xoroth, and the sun was maybe half the size of the one back home. It was also a brilliant azure, close to blending in with the sky.

Ialion said, "Amanthe, stay still. Let me release the block." I did as he told, freezing in place. I grunted in surprise as I felt his magic invading my mind, causing pressure to explode around my ears. Then it was over, and suddenly I felt a gentle pressure over my ears, the sensation of Selriona using the link, but no words came through. "Did it work?"

"Yeah, hang on. Gonna try talking to her now."

_'Selriona,'_ I sent. _'Hey, hey can you hear me?' _No response. _'Oh by the Light, don't tell me you passed out. Come on, wake up. We're here, we need you to tell us what kind of security there is. Hello?' _I kept trying for several minutes, trying to ignore the increasingly desperate looks on all three of our faces. That's when I had an idea. Perhaps _Selriona_ was passed out, but she was still getting the messages. And there was someone who would get them regardless. _  
><em>

_'Damn it. Okay, okay. Nalestrasza, I'm talking to you. I'm going to go to sleep, and I need you to create a shared dream. As much as I would _love_ to argue, this is a one-sided conversation. I need to be able to speak with you, okay? So get ready.'_

I turned to the two dragons. "Okay, I need you to knock me out."

Verthelion gave me a distinctly confused look. "What?"

"She's passed out, I can't talk to her, but I told Nalestrasza to set up a shared dream so that I _could._ But in order for that to work I have to be _asleep._ So hurry up and knock me out, time's of the essence," I hissed. "You can eat and drink while I'm out."

For a moment Verthelion's glowing purple eyes flared, but then he nodded. "Alright." Twilight flame coiled around his fists for a moment, and then I felt my legs give out from under me, darkness engulfing the world.

* * *

><p>"It took you long enough to figure that out," came Selriona's taciturn voice. I blinked, looking around. I was... in a box? The room was a perfect cube, made of some gray metal, large enough to house two very large dragon. One was Selriona, laying in a corner, eyes closed and whimpering slightly, the sight making my heart wrench. The other was an enormous Red dragon. She had no tusks, like all non-twilights, and her horns, instead of coming together like a colossus blade, swept straight back elegantly. Like Selriona, she had a thin white scar going down the right side of her back. In addition, she had a large patch of thinned membrane on her right wing, as did Selriona. Something was off, though. They both had giant holes in their left wings, an enormous rectangular tear starting at the bone and growing larger as it went down, removing a good half of the webbing on their left wings. Was that how Selriona had been captured? Some device tearing apart her wings?<p>

Nalestrasza continued. "I was honestly beginning to wonder if you'd _never_ think of speaking to me. Hmm."

I bristled. "Great to meet you too, Nalestrasza." I looked over at her Twilight counterpart. "What's wrong with her?"

She shook her head, the neck frill shaking from the movement. "She's being held down by the Legion. She has a couple chains wrapped around her, staked into her body." I winced. They did _what?_ "She's also silenced, and four eredar are keeping her mana drained as well as causing her a lot of _pain. _Both of us a lot of pain, actually, but I'm smart enough to push past it." She looked over her shoulder at Selriona, and I could've sworn I heard her voice soften. "Her on the other hand... it's all I can do to prevent any permanent psychological damage." She looked back at me. "Before we go any further, I need to know. Who else has come with you?"

"Verthelion and Ialion, we're the first response team, I guess you could say. The remaining Aspects back home had decided to convene to set up a reinforcement team to send after us. Don't know who they're sending, though."

"And when did you leave?"

I thought about it. "About... four days ago. No, three."

She nodded. "Mmhmm. Let me think about this for a moment..." A second passed. "Okay, thought about it. Based on the behavior of the Aspects, I've concluded that they will choose balancing a large force for safety with the time it takes to assemble said large force, and will send the best fighter from each Flight to aid. These would be, hmm, lets see. Pallasion, Vulcastrasz, Inceptikus, Andormu, and... Azuregos. Given the time to gather them, including teleportation, would put them roughly a day behind you, but with your passing making it easier for them to progress, they should be arriving five hours from now. Or less than one."

"Great," I said. "So we'll just wait here for them."

"NO!" she shouted, the gray room suddenly turning yellow hot for a moment, before it 'cooled' back down. "No, you have to come to us immediately. When you wake up, go towards the edge of the mountain that protrudes _furthest_ into the upper cloud layer. Go in that direction for one hour by Verthelion's pace and you'll find us."

"Why? What's happening? What are they doing?"

"One of my worse predictions was correct. They're using the humans, in combination the magic amplifier and the stolen iron vrykul, to resurrect _Sargeras._" I froze. No, no way, I couldn't have just heard that right. "They'll place him into the vrykul and use Selriona's life essence to make the revival permanent." No, no no nononono. She was _not_ saying what I thought she was saying. "You three _have_ to come here, NOW! By my estimate, there are only hours left before they finish! Once done, once done... there's no time! You can figure that out! Now wake up and get _over_ here!" The omnipresent light within the room began to darken rapidly...

"Wait! How well are you guarded?"

The darkening paused, and Nalestrasza's voice was faint. "I estimate several thousand surrounding demons of various types, with Kil'jaeden himself overlooking the defense. Four towers channeling a shield similar to how you were contained. Within, there is an enchantment that will only let you leave if one dragon's-worth of life essence is sacrificed, Verthelion will have to dispel that. If he can. Now _hurry up!_" With that, the light went out, and I groped around -

Smacking Ialion's scaled head, the palm of my hand cutting itself on one of his tusks. Right away he jerked back, holding me gently under one massive paw, two curved, ebony claws to either side of my head. "Amanthe, Amanthe, calm down. What did she have to say?"

"Let me up!" I shouted frantically, and he complied. Sargeras was coming back, _Sargeras _was _coming back_ and he planned to use _my_ patron's life to do it! This could not _possibly_ be any worse. "We have to go, now!" I searched around, ignoring the throbbing pain from my hand. Which way does the mountain go furthest... that way, away from the sun! I pointed in that direction. "That way, now! One hour by Verthelion's flying pace."

"Amanthe?" asked Verthelion, who had once again resumed his true form of a colossal Twilight dragon. "What's gotten you worked up?"

I gulped. "I'll explain on the way. Things just got _much_ worse."

* * *

><p><strong>Review please, let me know what you think!<strong>


	35. Chapter 35:Cavalry Arrives

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Huge thanks to my beta dharak. **

**Chapter published 2/20/13**

* * *

><p><span>Verthelion<span>

"So, wait," I said, unwilling to accept the news she was giving. "You're saying that the brainwashed mortals are busy dragging the soul of _Sargeras _back to inhabit an iron vrykul?"

"Yes," Amanthe said from Ialion's back. He was struggling to keep up with me, even with the occasional speed boosts she gave him. I channeled some of my power into him, increasing the rate at which his wings beat so that he wouldn't have to strain himself. Amanthe wore her twilight-scale armor, which would come in handy against all the demons. "Which is why we have to get there _now._ Good thing we left that note for the others, huh?"

Ialion grunted. "Very good. Question is, will they get to us in time? And even more important, will _we_ get _there_ in time?"

"We have to," I said. "We don't have any other option! Amanthe, what else did she say? Anything about the defenses?"

She nodded. "Yes. She estimates several thousand demons, and a demon lord that is likely Kil'jaeden. Also, there are four towers, similar to the ones that held me in a force field while I was on Argus. We'll need to take all four of them out if we're to get inside. And once inside, there is a magical aura. It'll silence some types of magic, and it will also make it _impossible_ to leave unless Sargeras has had his sacrifice. You'll need to dispel _that._"

I nodded. "Okay, got it. So, how long do we need to keep flying?"

"She said an hour at your speed, we should be there in ten minutes."

Almost an hour later, we had indeed arrived. I knew this because moving through the twilight realm was getting steadily more and more difficult, as if I was flying through syrup. Oh, and then there was the blinding column of Holy Light blasting a hole through the thick clouds, the air around it shimmering and crackling as it pierced into the Great Dark Beyond. I looked down at the pitch black clouds. "Let's start descending."

"Good idea," Ialion said. "Hold your breath, we do _not_ want to breathe that stuff in."

I nodded in confirmation. "Deep breaths everyone." I inhaled deeply and dove straight down, shutting my eyes. The smog wrapped around me like thick blankets, and I found myself having trouble keeping my breath held long enough, so I used my magic to let both myself and Ialion hold our breaths longer; Amanthe wouldn't have any trouble, since mortals could hold their breaths many times longer than dragons. When we burst out of the cloud layer, we both took deep gasps for breath. We landed, and my breath caught in my throat.

The building where the Legion was reviving Sargeras was clearly visible, a dot far in the distance with light shooting into the sky. It was quite far away, but that wasn't the problem. The _problem_ was the fact that the entire expanse of blackened stone around it was covered in heavier demonic corruption than my Flight had ever observed. A kilometer-wide ring surrounded the building, and we had gotten halfway there, placing us _right_ in the middle of the army. Not to mention the four towers channeling their fel-green magic onto the building where my Prime Consort was held, shielding it. And I could feel magic around it, a protective barrier... against _us._

"Hold on," I said as Amanthe slid off of my son's back, looking about the landscape skittishly. Bad memories, no doubt. "Don't go any further, you'll be forced out of the twilight realm."

"So they're doing that," Amanthe mused. "How?" she asked.

"Think of it like a beach and an ocean. When you're underwater, you are in the twilight realm, and will surface only if you want to. But as you walk closer and closer to land, the beach rises under you and _pushes_ you above water. They're doing the same thing here, but the barrier is a lot more... abrupt. It's difficult, costly magic, which is probably why they only have it here, where it really matters." I frowned. "Once we go after her, we'll enter the physical realm whether we want to or not, and the entire demon army will come crashing down on us."

"Well we need a plan!" Ialion hissed. "They could be pulling back Sargeras any moment now!"

I thought for a moment. "Alright. I'll leave part of my essence here, outside the barrier so I can draw energy from the twilight realm. I'll go through first and attract the attention of the demon army, luring them as far away as I can. After a short time to let me do that, you two go, remove the force field, and get into the building." I gulped. I didn't like what I was about to say, but it took _absolute_ priority. "The first thing you do is stop their resurrection. Everything, and I mean _everything_ else is priority number two. I'll try to come help you if I can, but I think I'll have my claws pretty full."

"Are you sure?" he asked. "I mean, if they kill you, then we'll be _doomed, _even if we manage to stop Sargeras from returning."

I tried to give him a reassuring smile, but couldn't keep my tusks from flaring out nervously before retracting them. "Don't worry, I _am_ an Aspect. I can take care of myself."

"Alright," Ialion said carefully, eyeing me sideways. "But promise me that if things start to go sour for you you'll pull back. If we fail, we don't need both Sargeras back _and_ him having control of the Heart of Twilight."

I nodded. "I will, don't worry."

"Well," Amanthe said, eyes fixated on the building from which spewed a fountain of Light. "If we're done with the plan, let's get started! We're running out of time!"

"Right," I said, extending my tusks with almost metallic _shwings_. "Remember, wait for me to pull them away. I'll try to damage the towers as much as I can. Here we go!" I extended most of my essence into the physical realm, leaving part of myself in the physical realm. Immediately, I saw through the physical realm that things were a _bit_ worse than I expected. My emergence into the physical realm sent out a shockwave of force, knocking a giant hole into middle of the demon army, imps and felhounds and various types of 'guard' sent flying. The demons around me were stunned for a moment, and in that time I took to the air and focused my magic. An orb of crackling twilight energy appeared in my claws and I let it go. It split into a dozen orbs and sailed out, forming an expanding ring along the ground that incinerated any demons they touched. They flew a bit further before exploding, taking even more with them.

I sailed through the air, growing closer to the building within the physical realm. The moment I entered the barrier, my twilight self merged into the physical realm against my will. I frowned. That hadn't been part of the plan.

It didn't matter. I cracked open my jaw and unleashed a river of twilight fire, blasting onto the ground with such force that it expanded in a ring, leaving a great gap in the demonic legions. Twilight lightning arced outwards from me, sending dozens of demons back to the Twisting Nether.

_Thud thud thud._ I wove my magic around me, forming an impenetrable shadow barrier. Shadow and fire spells began popping along it harmlessly, along with a dozen fel cannonballs. I located their source, a field of cannons, and shattered them with a single fireball.

Time blurred together as I flew around in a circle, gathering up the Legion. I made it seem like I was actually trying to get to the place where they held my first mate, but at the same time kept far enough away that Amanthe and Ialion would have little trouble reaching it, with most of the demons focused on me. Their attacks were nothing short of pitiful, making me laugh as their feeble spells peppered my shadow shield. Even when they DID manage to damage the barrier, I just refreshed it, before annihilating another few hundred of them with a strafing run. I landed time to time, swiping burning claws through their ranks and sending them scattering, lashing my tail, lowering my head and swinging it, skewering them upon my tusks and flicking them off. I took a deep breath and roared as loud as I could, dropping many of the surrounding demons to the ground, deafening them.

In the moment of distraction I unleashed a shadow nova, washing them away like sand on a beach, before blasting the closest tower that was feeding fel energy onto the building and shielding it. My blast's power utterly leveled it, turning the black stone into dust and smoke. The remaining three towers unleashed shadow novas, and I unleashed a narrow stream of twilight flame at the next one. The beam from it stopped, and using my magic I took the flames, brought them into a colossal pyroblast above the tower, and dropped it. Two down.

_Thud thud thud._ Roar. Screams. Hisses. Shouts to rally. They blended together as I brought down the third tower, but then I felt something... odd. A trill in the air, a change of pressure in the dark landscape. I turned about in the air to be greeted with a flurry of hundreds of tiny darts, each one made of fire, crashing into my stomach. I roared and fell down, crushing a legion of imps below me with sickening _squishes._ I got to my paws, reforming the shadow barrier I hadn't noticed had fallen and healing my burns, taking in the new threat.

"Well, that ain't good," I said with a tight throat. The new arrival was a red-skinned eredar, standing incredibly tall. His stomach was bare, revealing rippling sets of powerful muscles. Large, leathery wings extended from his shoulders, and his eyes glowed an acidic, toxic yellow. Kil'jaeden.

His brought his hands up, shadow magic crackling between them, and hurled out a hand. No taunting, no showing off. He went right on the attack, an arc of white lightning blasting into my shield and deflecting harmlessly around it. I felt my mana drain slightly, but nothing notable happened. With a roar, I got up, charging at the eredar lord with my head lowered, horns poised to stab. I hit nothing but air, an aura of red light fading around me. Another salvo of fiery darts peppered my shield, leaving small scorch marks that faded as quickly as they appeared, and I spun around with another roar. Alright, so he can teleport. Fine. I don't need my claws and fangs to kill him.

I took to the air, beating my powerful wings against the air. Each flap made gusts of wind blow outwards, sending demons scattering. Intense power coiled around my flanks, unstable arcs of twilight lightning keeping the demonic army at bay as I began pelting the Deceiver with fireballs and flame breaths. I noticed that the channel of Holy Light arcing from the building had begun to pulsate gently. Slowly, but it was certainly pulsing. I was torn away from my distraction when Kil'jaeden, a tiny burn on his chest, surrounded himself with tiny orbs of dark mist. They slowly orbited him, pelting me relentlessly with useless shadow bolts. A hail of attacks rained between us. The eredar, with his orbs and flame darts, and I, with my fireballs and various shadow spells. He left fire where he stepped, sometimes stumbling to my attacks, sometimes following me after he and the demons still surrounding him forced me back. I made sure to pretend the shadow spells hurt, so that they'd keep wasting their attacks on those.

I growled, unleashing a wide ocean of devouring flames, forcing the demon lord to shield himself with his wings. Those two had _better_ start moving...

* * *

><p><span>Amanthe<span>

"OUT OF MY WAY!" I shouted, creating an explosion of twilight flames in the middle of a group of felguards. The force of the blast sent them flying, and Ialion's shadow orbs, with a razor-sharp tether of dark energy between them, were busy carving out a large portion of the demons that had chosen to attack _us_ instead of the giant Aspect fighting Kil'jaeden. He unleashed a wide breath of twilight fire, and the eredar lord covered himself with his wings. The pressure in the air changed, the temperature plummeting rapidly. The already-thick shadows grew darker, like ink.

"What is he doing?" I asked.

Ialion connected the dots before I did. "Get down!" he shouted, his human form tackling me to the ground beneath a stone ridge.

Then a catastrophic explosion radiated out from Kil'jaeden, with the shout of "Oblivion!" and a dragon's roar. The darkness rushed around our cover, the darkness of thousands of fallen souls nearly getting us. It was over as quick as it began, the temperature rising and the shadows returning to normal. We got back up and continued to run. There was one tower left to destroy, and it didn't look like Verthelion would have the spare time to vaporize it, locked as he was in pitched battle with the Deceiver.

"Thanks," I breathed to Ialion. "Why don't you take your true form? It'll get us there quicker."

"And draw more attention to us?" he asked. "Not a good idea."

Random, miniature explosions of twilight flame began to occur in the area around the Twilight Aspect, saturating the ground and air. "I don't think we have to worry much about attracting attention!" I hissed. "Not with him doing _that! _And we're on a time limit, damn it!" I held my hands up, calling to a force larger than me, before thrusting my hands down. Divine fire streaked down from above, blasting a dreadlord that had decided to focus on us instead.

Ialion relented, a twilight pyroblast knocking back an infernal. "Fine, fine!" With a rush of dark blue mist he vanished, only to reappear a moment later, swinging his head and impaling a shivarra on his tusks. "Hang on tight!" he shouted, taking to the air and snatching me up with his forelegs. We flew rapidly towards the building, which was still a fair distance away. The channel of Light coming from it appeared to be... writhing. That couldn't be good.

I held out my hands, pointing at the ground sailing below my rapidly, firing as many spells down into the demons as I could. Ialion then _roared_ and dropped out of the sky, his claws going limp around me. I wriggled out from below him, levitating my way down to the ground safely as he crashed.

I noticed it had begun to rain. Not rain, like water. Not rain, like hail or sleet or snow. It was raining _meteors. _Red and black blazing balls of rock were forming just below the cloud layer and dropping, impacting the ground with deafening shockwaves, making the ground below my feet heave and buckle. _Kil'jaeden._

Then I realized something, my eyes widening. _Ialion!_

I raced over to the crash site. He was already back into his human form, so he wouldn't be as big a target, but seemed to be passed out cold. There was a flickering barrier of twilight energy around him, which was fortunate, but already a dozen imps were blasting away at it with their fireballs.

"Get away from him!" I shouted, making the diminutive creatures pause to look around at me. That was all the time it took me to unleash a destructive spell at one, searing its mind as well as those around it with waves of shadow magic. Imps were creatures of fire; they didn't resist shadow, and soon were all dead.

Ialion's barrier was gone, and I got a good look at him. He was cut and bloodied in some places, and there was a _very_ large burn mark on his back, just to the left of his spine. I let out a sigh of relief. If that had been just a little further to the right...

I wove a renew onto him, then spoke a word of power to shield him. "Come on, come on, wake up," I whispered. I looked up, and saw another meteor falling. This one would land right on top of us. Not if _I _could help it. I summoned my magic and unleashed everything I had at it. Levitates to slow it down, twilight pyroblasts, smites. I managed to break it into pieces when it had fallen halfway, the shards of rock falling harmlessly in a ring around us.

I held one hand up and channeled the Light, smiting a dreadlord that had arrived to fight me. By now a tide of demons were rushing to the battle between the Twilight Aspect and the Deceiver, only to be struck down in seconds. Most of them ignored us, but this one dreadlord decided it would take care of us, a decision that seemed to be unanimous among the rest of the demons that ran past us without giving us so much as a glance.

A cresting wave of fel energy exploded outwards from the demon and washed over me. I tried to sink into the twilight realm by reflex, but I _couldn't._ I screamed in agony as the carrion swarm threw me straight back, shadowy burns covering my body. I gasped for breath, weaving a renew on myself to slowly mend the injuries. The dreadlord was busy casting what appeared to be a shadow bolt, so I _silenced _him. His mouth closed abruptly, the shadow magic fizzling out. For a moment the winged demon looked confused, but then the Nathrezim ran at me, slashing at me with his claws. I dove to the side, scrambling to my feet and refreshing Ialion's renew. Something smacked me, the dreadlord's flaring wings sending me flying back. He spun around and tossed a shadow bolt at me, which I barely avoided, retaliating with a twilight fireball, then another column of holy flames.

He ran at me, ignoring all the spells I flung at him. I dispersed just before he could lacerate me with his claws, reappearing behind him and summoning a shadowfiend to replenish my rapidly depleting mana. The dreadlord roared in pain as the creature latched onto its back, ripping at the armor between his wings. I took the moment of distraction to begin frantically healing Ialion with binding heals, so that I myself would recover from that horrible, horrible carrion swarm.

With a roar and a curse at me, the dreadlord killed my shadowfiend by tearing it off his back and plunging his talons through its middle. It gurgled once, snapping weakly, then fell limp and dissolved into darkness. I gulped as the demon turned back to me, and I reacted by hitting him in the chest with a twilight pyroblast.

A dragon's roar echoed through the air, as did the roar of an eredar. The distraction was all the dreadlord needed to close in on me, raising me to eye level with a clawed hand wrapped tightly around my throat. I gave a rather undignified squeak at the raw strength of the arm holding me up. Shadows pooled in my throat and I _screamed_, but it did nothing but make the demon tighten its throat. I choked, unable to breath. I raised my hands to my neck to try to and peel off the fingers, but it was like they had _grown_ around me.

Suddenly I was dropped, and the dreadlord's horned face was in shock. There was also a pair of horns jutting out of his chest, nevermind the armor there. With a flick of his head Ialion, now awake, sent him flying, before stepping out of the way of a crashing meteor and deflecting it with a fireball. He nodded to me. "Thanks for protecting me. Let's go!" With that, he grabbed me again.

Several of the demons tried to attack us, but with Ialion's flame breath, my - albeit paltry - healing, and the giant-ass Aspect fighting their current leader conveniently close by, we made it to the last tower in no time.

"You know," I said, chuckling, as Ialion dropped me onto the top. He clung to the side and unleashed a torrent of fire, killing all the demons guarding the eredar in the middle, channeling fel energy onto the revival building. I dispelled the eredar's shield, and the Twilight dragon finished the job. "You used to be so cute when you were a whelpling," I said, trying to lighten the mood so that we might be not crushed by fear and, as a result, impaired in focus.

"Really?" he asked, now next to me in his human form. He raised an eyebrow. "Cute?"

I shrugged. "Well, yeah." I paused, shrugging. "What happened?"

He growled. "Yeah yeah. Alright, what do we do now? Help Verthelion or go in?"

I pointed to the building. From this close, I could barely even look at the pillar of Light without going blind. It seemed to be growing thicker, sparks flying out of it. But still, the building _was_ shielded.

"We need to get inside there. But first, we'll have to dispel what's left of the barrier. I'll do it, the Light will be very effective against it. Fly me down there and then keep me covered."

He dutifully nodded, then froze as the temperature once again began to plummet. "Down!" he shouted. Instantly I hit the ground, pressing myself against the cold, black floor of the tower. A blinding explosion of shadow energy came from behind the resurrection building, the shear _force_ behind it making me skid backwards almost to the edge. Luckily, thanks to my armor, the small bit of dark magic that reached me did no harm. "Okay, let's go! Levitate us down to the entrance."

I did, weaving the spell on both him and myself. With a running jump, we leaped off the last tower, sailing towards the ramp that lead towards what appeared to be the _only_ door on the entire building. However, I couldn't see in, since the fel energy shield was still active. It would fade on its own after a few minutes, but that was time we simply didn't have, and the beam of Light was growing stronger by the second, louder by the moment. From this close, even having the blinding glare just out of my field of vision made me furrow my brows and duck my head. The earth shook as more meteors pounded Argus.

"Ialion!" I shouted. "I'll dispel it, keep me covered!" I summoned my magic, calling desperately to the Light. _Please, you have to help me! I can't fail!_ I unleashed my magic onto the barrier, neutralizing its corruption, dispelling it, weakening it, while Ialion took his true form and began to spew flames around haphazardly onto the demons who were only just realizing what was happening.

Just a little bit more...

* * *

><p><span>Verthelion<span>

Neither of us were in good shape.

The battle had been intense and fast, each of us throwing attacks at the other, countering, retaliating, both magically and physically. It was clear that, in terms of raw power, I surpassed Kil'jaeden, and I also had the flight advantage over him. I couldn't fly too high, though, or the Burning Legion's army would divert its attention back to Amanthe and Ialion. I was more powerful than him, not by far, but by a noticeable margin.

However, Kil'jaeden was tens of thousands of years old. He was experienced in battle. Maybe not as much as Archimonde had been, since the Deceiver's role was primarily recruitment, but he still had several orders of magnitude more time learning the extent of his powers. Every strike of his was calculated, every spell meant to be a killing blow, battering me relentlessly, and he _also_ had an army backing him up. My rippling twilight bursts tore them apart before they could do much, but it was still energy taken away from assaulting the winged eredar directly. He was skilled with magic, enough for him to deflect the vast majority of my attacks away, which was more than I could boast. Still, I'd fooled him into thinking his shadow was powerful enough to hurt me, and so he wasted a lot of his attacks on useless dark magic.

Currently I had the upper claw. I drove Kil'jaeden back, bombarding him with relentless arcs of twilight lightning, fireballs summoned from my maw and from the air around me, shadow orbs, novas. I blacked out his power, preventing him from mending his injuries and making them actually hurt him instead. He grunted in pain, burn marks covering his body. He held out his hands, forming barrier after barrier to try and hold me off, layering them on top of each other. I'd seen him do this not long ago; once he was sufficiently protected, he would go on the offensive, starting with a hail of infernals about him and unleashing the darkness of a thousand souls. The massive shadow nova didn't hurt me, but if I wanted to keep up the act I _would _have to stumble.

However, I had no intention of allowing him to get to that point. I held back on my assaults, instead building up my magic and strengthening my shield. When I had prepared the spell, I opened my maw and silenced him. Kil'jaeden's mouth clamped shut against his will, and then I unleashed my full, focused fury in a narrow beam of twilight energy at the Deceiver, cutting through his barriers and burning the red skin underneath. His minions, combining their efforts, dispelled my silence on him, and he retaliated with a massive bloom of flame darts, peppering my barrier. The next wave, in addition to a meteor falling on top of the shield, made it fade away into nothing, leaving nothing to protect me from the next volley that made me roar in pain, falling to the ground before I picked myself back into the air.

I'd just lost the momentum, and was busy frantically shielding myself fast enough to protect myself from the demon lord's relentless assaults. His face was contorted with effort as he battered me, alongside his demons. I growled, curling up and focusing. Twilight energy formed a crackling orb between my forelegs, even as more dark blue explosions rocked the battlefield. I growled louder, rising to a roar as I called upon the powers given to me by the Old Gods, amplified a thousand-fold by the Heart of Twilight, and unleashed a devastating spell. A wall of shimmering purple energy traveled forward, prematurely bringing the Hour of Twilight upon those caught in it, turning felhounds and beholders into ash. And Kil'jaeden was hit by it dead center, throwing him off.

"Gragh! Miserable lizard!"

Both of us panted in exhaustion. I was tired, covered in burn marks that my heals could only alleviate so much, my muscles ached, as did my wings, and casting that last spell took out a sizable chunk of my already-depleted mana. My opponent fared little better, his muscled body covered in shadowy burns from my flame. Blood oozed from a long gash down his left side from the one time I managed to get close enough to claw him. But I wasn't interested in defeating him, all I cared about was delaying him long enough for Amanthe and Ialion to stop the resurrection process, the light of which was now glowing like the sun.

"Your efforts are in vain! In mere moments, you AND your miserable world will be doomed!"

"Talk to the tail!" I hissed, winging higher and diving at him. I pulled up at the last moment, throwing my tail down and whacking him in the head with the spiked club. He grunted in pain before unleashing another fire bloom upon me, burning me in spite of my magical protections, since the flames clung _so close_ to my scales. I wove a series of shadow mends on myself to negate the damage. I couldn't hold against him much longer...

Then, everything happened at once.

Five figured materialized next to me, and a torrent of spells descended upon Kil'jaeden. Twilight blasts, arcane barrages, toxic green poison, amber spirals, blazing fireballs all fell down upon him, popping against his body.

He roared in pain and shock, flailing his hands as he stumbled, and I took the moment of distraction to view the new arrivals, hope rekindling within my chest.

Pallasion was here, along with several others. I recognized Azuregos, Vulcastrasz, and Inceptikus. The Bronze, though, I did not.

Emerald light engulfed the Red and Green dragon, and I felt my wounds heal, relaxing warmth flowing along my sore, aching muscles. "We came as quick as we could," said the Bronze. "There must still be time, yes?"

"Andormu!" Azuregos shouted. "Talk later! Kill demons _now!_"

All six of us took a deep breath, and unleashed another devastating barrage onto the Deciever. He growled and flashed me one last look of hatred with his sulfurous yellow eyes, a glare I met without hesitation. The message was exchanged between us without words. _Another time. _Then, with a flare of crimson light, he teleported away.

I looked at the five gathered. "Alright," I said. "Let's go!" With that, we winged off towards the ressurection building. The beam of Light was impossibly bright now, but the green fel-shield around it was flickering and almost gone. Before I could think to do anything except fly there, Azuregos opened his maw and unleashed an arcane missile. It split into three mid-flight, and then into nine, before merging back into one and smashing into the shield, lowering it. I noticed that the demons all around us were crawling at a snail's pace, as if they were moving through water. Even Amanthe and Ialion were slowed, the former starting into a run, the latter in his true form, fending off a throng of beholders. With a grunt of effort I winged myself over to them and landed in my human form as time was restored to normal speed.

"GO!" I shouted, blasting off the now-exposed door with a gesture, running inside without waiting for them.

Instantly I stopped in my tracks, blinded. My eyes burned, and I slammed them shut, placing a hand infront of me to hold off the light. I heard Amanthe next to me, and I also heard the noise of her magic. Then, I could see, her shadow magic having negated much of the light. The situation was, by no means, good. There was Selriona, bound and chained by metal lances and four eredar. And, infinitely more important, there was the pedastle with what had to be the magic amplifier, firing a ray of Holy Light into the sky, surrounded by nearly fifty mortals, all engulfed in halos of golden magic. My eyes widened when I saw that one of them was holding Selriona's capacitor in her old, withered hands.

Without any interference from the Bronze, time slowed down. I felt my fury rising to the surface, twilight fire streaking from my hands like a geyser. I saw a beam of darkness span the distance in an instant, waves of darkness spilling over the misguided mortals in slow motion. I heard Selriona's muffled grunt of surprise, heard Ialion's footsteps beside me.

Then, time resumed its normal speed. The beam of Light cut out, and a surge of intense heat and force exploded inside the building, a blast resonating around the pedastle. The closest mortals were obliterated outright, the further ones turned ash, and the ones farthest out flung against the walls and leaving blood stains. The blinding glare cut out at the same time Amanthe's spell did. The iron vrykul was unmoved. The three of us skidded to a stop, watching in horror.

The very top of the building had long ago been shattered by the beam of Light, and the edges were glowing red with heat. However, it was not this that caught our gaze. There, floating like a malevolent cloud, was just that. A _cloud._

It was black, blacker than the ash clouds of Argus, blacker than Neltharion's scales, blacker than ink, blacker than night. Tiny sparks shone in it, like stars, but they were a blazing, fiery red. The cloud hung about at the top of the building, sealing off the exit, writhing about itself and otherwise not doing much. However, just its _presence_ was almost overwhelming. It was unnaturally cold in spite of the intense heat it gave off. The pressure of the air rose so fast my ears popped painfully, but I had difficulty breathing anyhow.

It only took me one word to sum up the situation at hand, but it seemed like that one word simply could not sum up the utter despair and tragedy that had befallen the cosmos as a whole.

"Sargeras," I whispered. In that time, Ialion and Amanthe killed the four eredar keeping my mate stunned and in agony. She moaned, and I snapped out of it, jumping down and running over to her.

"Selriona, Selriona, oh look at you." I called my magic, unraveling the chains around her, pulling the stakes out of her body. She roared in pain as they slid out. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, but I have to get them out. Here." I tried to use what little mana I had left to heal her wounds, but nothing worked. Something had disabled that part of my magic. Luckily, Amanthe healed her, stopping the purple blood spilling from her newly-opened wounds.

"You... you came for me," she whispered raggedly, and I realized they hadn't been giving her water, using some magic to keep her hydrated without soothing her throat. "I - I didn't think anyone was coming. But... they brought..."

"I know," I said, kneeling by her head in my human form and wrapping my arms around her. "I know." The others came in at that point, assuming mortal forms except for Pallasion, who ran over to Selriona. He nudged his wing under her stomach.

"Here, can you stand?" Slowly he helped her to her paws. "There, that's good. Lean onto me." She did, and Pallasion nearly collapsed, since she made almost no effort to keep herself up, panting heavily. I doubted she could've even if she wanted. Pallasion turned his gaze onto the soul of Sargeras. "What now? We can't just _leave_ that thing there, whatever it is."

"The body," Andormu suggested, in a blood elf form. "Destroy the iron vrykul, perhaps?"

I wasted no time in bringing my hands up and unleashing a thick stream of shadow energy at it. Pallasion, Vulcastrasz, Inceptikus, Andormu, Ialion, Azuregos and Amanthe all joined in trying to destroy it, but an orb of shimmering fel energy kept our combined attacks at bay. "Damn it! What do they _have_ on that blasted thing?" Azuregos shouted.

"I want to know why Sargeras hasn't entered it yet," Amanthe asked. The recovery team shot her incredulous looks. Selriona keened mournfully. "Yes, they revived Sargeras! We arrived a half-second too late. Why hasn't he possessed it yet?"

"He's probably stunned," I suggested. "He _did_ have the Light used on him non-stop for the past few days. He'll be out of it for a while yet, I doubt he even knows we're here. Gives us some time to figure out what to do."

The Red dragon, in the guise of a high elf, pondered this. "Well, we can't destroy the body he means to possess. We won't be able to do anything to the soul itself. What if we deprived him of any life essence to stabilize himself with? Demonic essence doesn't work, since when they die they just come back. If we were to all leave, he would return to the Nether in one day."

"Then what are we waiting for?" Ialion asked, briefly shapeshifting to his dragon form, then back to human, to get up to the balcony. He walked towards the door we came in on. However, the moment he reached the boundary a shield, previously invisible, flickered into existence and forced him back. "Oof!"

"We can't leave," Amanthe whispered. "Nalestrasza told me about this, remember? Once inside, we _can not_ leave until Sargeras is stabilized. We _have_ to dispel that."

I nodded. "Alright, let's try. Everyone around me." They all gathered in a circle around me, save for Pallasion, who was still helping Selriona stand under her own power. "Let's try." With that, we all channeled our magic into the building around us, trying to dispel the magic keeping us in. It didn't seem too tough, a power surge would overlord it and that would be that. I tried to overwhelm it, but the problem was I didn't have _enough_ power. My duel with Kil'jaeden had drained me horribly, and now I didn't have the strength left to dispel it. Even if I recovered my mana, I was still so _tired._

After a few more minutes of attempts, we gave up. Inceptikus looked at the ground with closed eyes, then back up. "Well, now what?" he asked. "We can't dispel that. How're we going to get out."

I growled, gnashing my teeth. "Brute strength, if nothing else." I approached one of the black walls and channeled my strength, pulling back a fist. I held it there for a moment, debating this. I looked back at the others. "Get back, I'm shifting." With that, they shuffled back, making room as I expanded back into my true form. Once done, I began attacking the wall with all my strength. _Nothing_ was happening. "Rrah! What in the name of the Titans are these walls _made_ of?!" I roared, pushing myself harder. I sunk into the twilight realm, I _could_ now, but even then the extra strength didn't help. Eventually, when my claws didn't even _scratch_ the black walls, I was forced to realize I couldn't break it, shifting back into the physical realm and into a human form.

"We can't get out," Selriona said. "We can't stop Sargeras. He's going to come back, and we're all going to die." She shook her head. "Someone... someone has to get out of here. Tell the other Aspects what's happened here. We _have_ to be ready for him. But the only way we can leave is if Sargeras returns."

"Selriona," Amanthe said quietly, as if not wanting to believe it. "Are you saying that one of us has to die?"

"Yes." Silence descended.

I took a deep breath. "I... who is it going to be?"

Everyone instantly shouted '_Not you!' _

"I _can't_ die, unfortunately," Andormu said, sounding unmistakably relieved. "I already have a future self, therefor it is an impossibility."

"I should stay," Amanthe said. "I'm the only mortal here." She licked her lips. "As much... as much as it pains me to say it, I'm the least important one here."

"No!" Selriona said. "No, no you can't die. You _can't._ You _won't._ Besides, you wouldn't be enough to tether Sargeras to his new body. If anything I should. It's me they kidnapped, it's me they want."

"They don't want you specifically," Vulcastrasz said, straightening out his back. "They want your life essence. I shall stay."

"Like hells you will!" Pallasion shouted. Very quickly we descended into a sea of arguments, each of us suddenly struck with a sense of self-sacrifice, given to us by the fact that the Dark Titan himself was _right there. _The demons outside weren't coming in - they knew they didn't have to.

A roar cut through the arguments. Ialion had shifted to his true form. Combined with Pallasion and Selriona, it was beginning to get crowded. "QUIET! I will stay. I'm the youngest one of us here, my death will cause the least loss, and that is _final! _Everyone else can go into the twilight realm and I'll stay up here. When... when Sargeras sacrifices my life to tether himself, go back to Azeroth full speed and warn the Aspects, call a meeting with the mortals, whatever! Let them know that Sargeras has returned."

My heart twisted inside of my chest. "Are you certain, Ialion?"

He nodded. I imagined Selriona would've protested at least once, but she was still quite out of it. "It has to be me."

"Ialion," Amanthe said. "No..."

"Do you have a better idea?" he snapped, whipping around to face her. She fell backwards to avoid being hit by his head. "I'm the youngest out of us all that would still be able to tether Sargeras to his body. And like it or not, that's the only way we're going to leave! Even if we shift into the twilight realm, we still won't be able to leave. They'll realize this and force us back out, and then we _all_ die! This is the only way."

I walked up to Ialion, looking up at him. "So be it then." He leaned his head down and I placed my left hand on his crest. "Thank you for your service to the Twilight Dragonflight. You will be missed." Pallasion and Amanthe repeated this gesture. Selriona, who'd recovered the strength to stand under her own weight, whispered the words to him. I looked around at the rest of the dragons, preparing the scraps of mana I had to pull us into the twilight realm. "Pallasion, help me pull them into the twilight realm. Sargeras might wake up any moment."

He nodded, and dark blue energy began to flow along his scales like water, as it did along my robes. The world grew darker, and I sighed in relief, but immediately after my heart twisted, my eyes stinging. Oh, my poor son...

* * *

><p><span>Ialion<span>

Fear gripped me when I saw the others fading away into safety, leaving me alone in the darkness. _Lucky them_, I thought bitterly. For a moment I felt resentful at them, for not fighting more to be the ones who stayed, for having left me no choice. But I shook it off. No, it had to be me. Better me than any of them.

I took quickly took deep breaths, my tail wagging behind me, the club scraping along the ground. I looked up at the cloud that was Sargeras, the Dark Titan, the Destroyer of Worlds. The black cloud studded with red stars was nothing short of ominous, yet that word failed to capture all the dimensions of its presence. And this was just his _soul._ It was stunned. It couldn't hurt me - yet.

I took steady breaths, forcing my racing heart to relax. "You're doing it for them," I whispered to myself. "You're doing it for them. This is the only way. You're doing it for them." I thought about my mates back on Azeroth, and dipped my head. "I'm sorry. We should've been quicker. Then it wouldn't have come to this." I smacked my club against the ground. "If only we'd been a bit faster!" I roared. But what could we have done, beyond pushed ourselves just a _little bit_ harder? If we'd brought one more person, than we'd have gone through Argus faster, but father would have been slowed down significantly pulling them there in the first place. If only two had gone, then one, we wouldn't have found Selriona in the first place, second we wouldn't have been enough to rescue her.

The cloud began churning faster, and my breath caught in my throat. This was it. "This is it," I repeated aloud. I settled into a combat stance, bringing twilight fire rolling and bubbling into my crop. I flared out my wings menacingly, ready to fight the moment Sargeras entered the iron vrykul. I had no chance against him, but like hells I was going down without a fight.

The black mist began to move. It funneled downwards, forming a vortex above the titan construct's body. It poked it once experimentally, a second time, and then began to flow in. I stepped further back, pressing myself against the wall as a wind began to whip up around me. Like water draining into a sponge, Sargeras's soul began to seep into the iron vrykul, faster and faster. Its metallic skin, originally bronze, began to heat up rapidly, until it was gently glowing red-hot. At that moment Sargeras's soul finished possessing the vrykul. He opened his eyes, and they were pitch black voids, devouring all hope and light around them like a vacuum. He stood up, closing his eyes again. He began laughing, the noise paralyzing me with it deep, resonating power. He opened his eyes, with a grin that would haunt me for the rest of my life (Which wasn't looking to be much longer).

"I'm back," he said, like the tolling of a death knell.

I blasted him with a fireball, the indigo projectile slamming into his chest and sending him flying backwards into the podium with an 'oof!'. It cracked.

He got back up, but I didn't waste any time before pelting him with more fireballs. I called my magic around me to form a barrier, and unleashed my full arsenal of spells on him. Shadow orbs, wracking pains, blackouts, twilight immolation, everything I had, I unloaded onto the Titan. He stumbled back against my onslaught, leaning down and grabbing onto the pedestal with one hand. Just as I was winding up another flame breath, he held out the other hand, a flaming barrier forming between us, deflecting my fire harmlessly. In that span of time a shadow barrier formed around Sargeras, than contracted against his metallic skin and turned invisible. More and more layers condensed onto him, until when the fiery wall dissipated and my next fireball hit him, he didn't even flinch.

He raised a hand and clenched a fist. I yelped as something like thick ropes seemed to wrap around my body. He lifted his arm, and the telekinetic ropes lifted me, struggling and thrashing in his mental grip. Fear gripped my heart as I came to a halt in mid air, thrashing violently against the Titan's magic.

Sargeras looked amused, and spoke in a voice with a metallic echo, one that was deep and dark and stirred me deepest nightmares to the surface, making me want to crawl into a hole and curl up. "Ah, excellent. You're just what I need." He tilted his head to the side. "Though, I do wonder." He shrugged, keeping one arm up to hold me in the air. "Why even try? Surely, you must know you can not win. Surely you know our might can not be withstood. Why do you even try?"

I struggled to speak past the fear. "Because we _have_ to." I spat another fireball at Sargeras. It impacted, but he didn't even seem to notice it.

"Is that so?" he asked. Then he spun around, and at the same time the ropes holding me threw me across the building, smacking into the wall on the other side and sliding down onto the ground. I groaned, getting to my paws shakily. Sargeras stalked towards me, the air around him shimmering with the heat of his red-hot skin. "You have to try. But _why?_ Ever since encountering your... vexing_..._ world I have wondered." On the word 'vexing' he launched an enormous fireball at me, the size of a drake. I couldn't react in time, and so it smashed into my stomach and threw me back against the wall. I fell onto my back and twisted over, whimpering like a hatchling.

"Why do you fight? Why do you struggle? You'll just die _tired._" With that he reached me and gripped my head. I roared in agony as his hand burned my scales. With impossible strength, Sargeras lifted me up, over and around him, smashing my back into the ground next to him and letting go. I panted, and then with another wave of telekinetic power I was skidding across the floor, scales flaking off my back.

"We've beaten your armies back before!" I shouted with false confidence, shakily getting to my paws. I drew on what strength I had left after all the recent combat. "We _will_ do it again." I opened my maw and unleashed a beam of twisting shadows at Sargeras. He simply held up a hand, releasing his own dark magic, but while mine was tinted violet, his was pitch black, as if he was projecting a geyser of ink at me. For a moment our beams held each other in equilibrium, and I thought I had a chance. Then Sargeras pushed his arm forward and all my resistance crumbled like a sandcastle in a tsunami. The beam of darkness crashed into my head and threw me back against the wall, but the shadow itself caused me little harm thanks to my natural resistance.

"Hmm," he mused. "Curious. Resistant. What a curious breed of dragon you are." The Destroyer of Worlds brought both of the iron vrykul's hands together, a giant pyroblast growing in between them. Before I could fully recover he threw the pyroblast up, and it exploded after a moment in the air into a shower of sparks, hailing down around me and making me scream in pain. I turned the scream into a roar, bringing all the fire I had left into my crop and exhaling a super-hot stream of twilight flame at Sargeras. He grunted, stumbling back as the river of twilight fire engulfed him, making him vanish from my sight. I didn't care, I kept up the blast as long as I could, walking towards him before stopping, out of fire. When I stopped the jet of flames, I swung my left foreleg at him, sending him crashing to the side. I yelped as he impacted the wall, nursing the slight burn I'd acquired from touching him.

Sargeras brushed himself off, then held out a hand. Like a fishing net, black tendrils exploded outwards, wrapping around me, ensnaring me. I growled as they tried to throw me to my right, but dug in my paws and resisted the force. The Titan seemed to be giving his all, not knowing how to counteract my shadow resistance. After a few moments of us struggling, he relented. I had a moment to breathe before once again I was lifted into the air, pressed tight against the wall. I roared in pain as the invisible force increased, Sargeras walking closer, the wall of pressure growing and breaking some of my ribs with sickening cracks.

Just as breathing was getting almost impossible, the pressure stopped increasing. I gasped for breath, barely getting enough air. Sargeras stopped just before me, one red-hot metal hand outstretched. "Here is the thing. You have driven my _armies_ back before. You have never once, not one of you, ever fought me directly for more than a trifling amount of time." Gurgling in pain, I reached my paws up to my neck, trying to push away a nonexistent wall to relieve the pressure. "In the War of the Ancients, that orc accomplished no more than a superficial injury. What can you possibly do?"

"Med... ivh..." I croaked out.

"Ah yes, Medivh." The pressure throbbed, breaking more ribs. I tried to roar, but all that came out was a mewl. "He fought me valiantly in his mind. It being _his_ body, he had the advantage needed to hold me off at least some of the time. But this body? It _has _no soul to fight me, not even subconsciously as a chosen demon of my armies would. And it is made of Titanic metal, which makes the acclimation _so much easier._ Perhaps I am not at my full power, but I have far, far more than enough. And it won't be hard for me to reach your world, not like it was last time, when our preparations are completed a few decades from now."

I choked and gasped. The pressure slowly increased until I was seeing spots. "You'll... lose."

Suddenly the pressure was gone, and the world was spinning over and around. I flew through the air, skidded along the floor, then was raised straight up, and slammed back into the ground, my wings snapping. I moaned, coughing and gasping for breath, and I wove shadow mends to heal the broken bones I had.

"We will not lose!" Sargeras shouted from everywhere and nowhere at once. "We have toyed with your pitiful world long enough! And with me leading the armies, what hope do you have? You have lost, dragon." Then he was standing next to me, black eyes gleaming hungrily, his metallic hands starting to glow with fel magic. "And with your life essence sacrificed to me, the resurrection spell shall be complete. And nobody on your world will be the wiser."

I grunted, which was all I could manage, when he began to cast the spell. I gasped for breath, struggling about like a dying ant. It was getting harder to move, my life being siphoned away in green filaments into the Dark Titan. I moved once more, then my head hit the stone floor like a rock. My eyelids grew heavier and heavier...

"Exchanging blows with your world has been... fun," I heard him say, the last bits of life leaving my body, my shadow resistance offering no bulwark. "But the time for games is over."

And then darkness fell.

* * *

><p><strong>Please review, let me know what you think!<strong>


	36. Chapter 36:Dark Fate

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Huge thanks to dharak for being my beta!**

**Chapter published 2/27/13**

* * *

><p><span>Selriona<span>

"Ow," I whined, still leaning against Pallasion from where we laid. "Ow. Ow."

"Relax," he said from my left. "Don't move your wing."

"I'm not," I complained. "It's hurting on its own." Another lance of pain flared up along my left wing. "Ow. Ow."

I leaned my head back and rotated it, cracking my neck comfortably. We were in Grim Batol. Finally, _finally. _While Verthelion went to go speak with Alexstrasza about what had happened, and Amanthe returned to her mate in Stormwind, Pallasion and I retired to a cavern within the underground city so that he could keep watch over me. The cave was quite large. As opposed to most rooms, which were rectangular and patterned, it was irregular stone, as if the dwarves had simply blown up a lot of rock and never bothered to do anything else. It suited us just fine.

"Want me to heal it again?" he asked, stroking my back with the wing he'd draped over me.

I nodded. "Yes, please." Chilling warmth began to flow through my wing joints, soothing the aches on my left wing. I still couldn't use magic, ever since my mana had been drained beyond empty on Argus. I had a mana _void_ to make up for, and a sizable one at that. The first thing I did upon Verthelion bringing me to their stores of water was drain two flasks. When I returned to Azeroth I went to the nearest river and drank until I couldn't feel my throat, before devouring as much prey as I could.

I sighed, relaxing against Pallasion. "Thank you."

"No problem. Do you want to get up, move around? Get your blood moving?"

"Yeah, that might be a good idea." I got to my paws, my legs shaking, wincing as I pulled on the lines criss-crossing my body where the chains had scraped off my scales, the sealed wounds where they'd been staked into me. I glanced over my back and fought back a sob when I saw the injury. My left wing was shredded, half of its webbing torn away when the Legion's mortal puppets ripped me out of the sky. Normally, webbing grew back. Along our wing-bones are roots that regrow lost webbing, similar to how mortal nails regrow out of their fingers when cut. But the metal lance went deeper than my purplish webbing, it actually tore the roots themselves out of my body. The webbing wouldn't regrow without them. It was like cutting off a mortal's leg; I would never fly again.

Then the reminder of what else had happened on Argus besides my permanent grounding came up, and I fought back a tear. Ialion, my poor son. I'd lost children before. Sickness, keeping our charge, storms over the ocean. It was natural, as a dragon. If we didn't lose a sizable portion of our offspring, we would rapidly overpopulate. I'd never lost an entire brood, thank the Titans, but every child lost still... still burned. Especially when they died to take my place as a necessary sacrifice.

I looked down from my wing, scraping a claw along the earth. "How... how will I get up to the surface?" I asked.

"I'll help you," Pallasion said, getting up as well. "There's a path I like to take, but I'll show you the tunnels the dragonspawn use. It's safer; my way involves jumping along ledges over the lava pit."

"Thank you." I followed him out of the cavern, wincing with every step. My legs had been broken for a long time, and even with their healing spells, I still limped on my left foreleg. Alexstrasza herself had healed me, which went so very, very far. But as corrupted as she was, with part of her soul burned out to stop the taint, she wasn't able to heal me as much as she could've in her prime. And so I limped, for another month was the guess.

Pallasion took a right and headed away from the central spire into the deep of Grim Batol. He kept his pace slow, stopping when I paused to catch my breath now and again. I thought for sure that we were lost, walking up and down stairs, past groups of drakes and dragonspawn and drakonids, but before too long we were at the gateway, the guards letting us pass with respectful nods.

The valley was warm, touched gently by the sun, warming my blood comfortably despite the fact that Grim Batol was already heated by liquid rock. Fluffy white clouds hung in the sky, creating streaking golden rays along the ground. I gazed out at the Twilight Highlands from where we were on the mountain. I took it slowly, my body still all sorts of shaken. I looked up and saw a pair of red drakes from the nearby Vermillion Redoubt playing in the air, talon tag from the looks of it. I bit back a sob and looked down.

"I can never fly again," I repeated dumbly. It didn't seem possible. I knew it, but didn't quite accept it. Much the same way I knew there was a giant mass of ice on the planet's southern pole, or how a Dark Titan with a serious vendetta against our world had a physical form again. I knew those were facts, but I was also unable to quite wrap my head around it. Flight. I could never fly again. Not even the Dragonqueen could heal dismemberment; why else was she unable to restore the fingers on Korialstrasz's mortal form after he lost them? It was just too much. It went above and beyond what could be done. What healing spells actually did was accelerate the speed at which one's body regenerated to incredible levels_._ Things that would heal over months healed in seconds, over decades in minutes, but things that would never heal on their own never healed at all. And membrane roots simply _did not_ grow back once shredded.

Pallasion placed his wing over my back. "I'm going to be so groundsick," I whispered. "You've never _been_ groundsick. It's awful. I - I don't want to go through that."

"It's okay, Selriona," he murmured. "It's okay. We'll help you. We'll help you through it. It won't last forever, I promise you."

I breathed in sharply through my nostrils, thanking him. Still, those words repeated in my head over and over again. _I'm grounded. I'm grounded. I'm grounded. _I'd lost such a vital part of myself. Pallasion took no joy in flight, thanks to his acrophobia, but I _loved _it. I loved doing flips and rolls, dives and rises. I would _never_ be able to do that again, never feel the thermals beneath me wings, the wind along my tail or the tingle of gravity as I dove. And I'd lost not only my wings, but also a son...

I bit back another sob, tears stinging my eyes and flowing down my face. I flicked out my tusks briefly to send them flying off.

"Just don't think about it, alright?" he said. "Look, it's a beautiful day. The sun is shining, the air is warm, and there's a group of stag nearby. Can't you smell them?"

I inhaled deeply, tasting the air and understanding what he meant. "Yes but... how can I hunt without flying over them?"

"You're faster than them," he said. "You have your claws and fangs, and your fire. Come on, I'll help you. Find a nice plump stag to bury your fangs in, it'll make you feel better." He raised his head and inhaled deeply, turning his head down the slope. "That way," he said. "Behind the little hill." He looked down at my forelegs. "Think you can do it?" he asked with a hint of challenge in his voice.

I growled and flared out both my wings, instantly regretting it when pain blossomed along the shredded one, forcing me to pull them both back. "Just watch," I snarled, setting off towards the hill he'd motioned towards, as fast as my limp could carry me. Pallasion jogged beside me, his wings, connected to his tail like a bat's, tight against his back. The ground shook beneath our weight, and in mere moments I saw the family of stag. They saw us, too, and instantly turned tail to run, scattering in all directions. Pallasion was to my left, so he went left, while I went right after a particularly meaty-looking male.

Pallasion was right. Even with my limp, and without my wings, I was far faster than the stag was, and soon found myself pinning it down with my good forepaw. I looked down at it happily, watching it thrash desperately for a moment. I ended its struggles by placing more weight on the paw holding it down, crushing its bones and driving my claws in. Its struggles weakened, and then stopped.

I looked to my left, Pallasion approaching with a female clamped in his jaws, striding towards me and dropping the carcass. I smiled. "Looks like I _can_ hunt like this." I froze, depression washing over me. "I - I'll have no choice anymore. I _have_ to. Oh Titans..."

"Eat," he commanded.

"Right," I said, shaking my head. I lowered my head to the stag I'd caught and dug in, my fangs cutting and slicing and ripping its flesh. I wagged my tail happily as I devoured it, the delectable muscles and organs tumbling into my body, drinking the bodily fluids to relieve the omnipresent thirst, snapping the bones like twigs in my maw. Before too long, there was nothing left of the animal but a bloodstain. I looked over, licking some of the blood off my muzzle. Pallasion had done much the same to his prey, a red smear around the indigo scales of his jaws. I sighed contently, idly flicking the gore off my claws.

"You were right. I feel so much better." I dipped my head. "Thanks, Pallasion." I stepped forwards to him, but stumbled on my bad leg. I cursed as Pallasion ran over, supporting me as I got my balance back.

"Come on, let's walk. Don't worry about Sargeras or the meeting or anything else for now. Focus on getting better and enjoying the day." He didn't need to add the unspoken sentence. _You'll need every bit of happiness the coming weeks._

* * *

><p><span>Verthelion<span>

I groaned, sharing an exasperated look with Kalecgos next to me. The half-elf shaped dragon also shook his head, crossing his arms.

"They've been at it for fifteen minutes," I whispered to him in Draconic, standing from the chair I'd been given.

He scoffed. "Tell me about it. This is no way to figure out a plan, by bickering like whelplings!"

"Let them get it out of their systems," Ysera said. "If I'm right, they should be calming themselves down soon."

Sure enough, the assembled mortals began to calm down, their voices lowering from shouts to exasperated speaking. There was Malfurion Stormrage, leader of the Cenarion Circle, by far the calmest of the assembled mortals. Even so, his amber yellow eyes blazed with intensity, as they had been ever since I dropped the news of Sargeras.

There was Gorrog, the current leader of the Earthen Ring, descendant of Go'el, and every bit of powerful. His olive green skin was covered in perspiration, which attributed heavily to the volume at which he had been roaring during the mortals', ehem, 'discussion'. Next to the current Earth-warder was King Terenas III, a silvery crown around his head, fitting well with the steely gray garments he'd picked for the meeting. Next to him was Warchief Toron. The tauren stood tall and proud, with wooden decorations adorning her shoulders. Like everyone else, she'd brought no weapon, leaving the spiked glaive of her predecessor, a weapon as tall as her, back in Orgrimmar.

The final two members, Verela and Tariun, were of the Kirin Tor and the Argent Crusade respectively. Verela was the current leader of the Six, the blood elf adorned with shimmering violet/gold robes that seemed to shift as she moved, almost copying Ysera's eyes, her fox-colored hair tied in a bun. Tariun wore his golden armor, passed down through the centuries among the leaders of the Crusade, though the dwarf had to stand on an elevated platform so that he could get the proper attention someone of his station deserved. The Ashbringer was left in Hearthglen, under the Argents' strictest security.

I looked to my left. There stood Kalecgos, followed by Ysera, then Nozdormu. Alexstrasza, however, had not attended. She, thinking past her steadily declining corruption, came to the conclusion she was in no fit state to make these sort of decisions and allowed her current Prime to attend in her stead, giving him her blessing to make decisions in her name. So there stood Vonrastrasz in his human form. He'd elected to pick a form with red eyes, of course, but dirty blonde hair that fell into a tail-shape behind his head.

I sighed, before stepping forwards. "Alright, _enough!_" I shouted, making all the mortals stop their arguments and fall into instant silence. "Bickering relentlessly is not going to get any of us anywhere! The first thing we must do is predict the Legion's next course of action, and _then_ come up with a plan to counter them!" I hesitated for a moment. "_Calmly_," I added.

"Well what do ya suggest?" Tariun shouted. So much for calmly. "I don't know if ya've grasped this, but this is _Sargeras_ we're talking about!" I growled, letting the glow of my eyes flicker. "Um, no disrespect, Aspect. But with him on the loose, what exactly can we do? Ya know that if he steps foot on this world, there's nothin' that we can do about him!"

"Not necessarily," Verela interjected, looking my way. "You said he's in the body of an iron vrykul, right?"

I nodded. "Correct."

"Then he won't be at his full power. Won't be a pushover either, but we could stand a chance at killing him. Only problem will be how."

"Our main problem won't be Sargeras," Toron said, nudging the subject away from the Titan. "What I'm more worried about are the armies he commands, that would sweep over this world like a tidal wave. We must decide on how to prepare for such a battle. How would they even reach our world in the first place? They would need portals."

I placed a hand under my chin. "The Legion will build up one of its outposts, either on Outland or Azeroth, and open enormous portals there to reach our world. They'd form bases quickly, knowing that we _can_ destroy them. That's the thing with this invasion." I looked across at the mortals. "The demons have _learned_ not to underestimate us. They _know_ that we can beat them, which is why they'll be cautious." I paused for a moment. "_Have_ been cautious. Each time they moved their plan forward, it's typically been around eight decades. Once they got the magic amplifier, they waited eighty years to kidnap the priests and paladins. After another eighty years, they revived Sargeras. They're waiting like this so that we'll _forget_ their threat in the time lapse. So that we'll grow complacent."

"If that is so, _Verthelion_," Malfurion said, gazing at me across the table with his glowing eyes. Irritation boiled in me at the challenge in his gaze, and I stared back. "Then there is nothing we can do to prevent a second invasion. They'll just wait, and wait, until we have lowered our guard, and then swarm us. Unless, we make them believe we have grown complacent, while still preparing ourselves. We must ready our forces, prepare them, slowly, gradually, over the decades. The next invasion will likely be in eighty years, if what you say is true. If we pull this off, in that much time, when the Legion attacks, we will be prepared."

"Eighty years is a lot of time for most mortals," Kalecgos said, looking at the leaders of the Horde, Alliance, and Argent Crusade. "You _will_ need to pass on this information to your successors." He paused, looking uneasy, then shook it off. "In related news, my Flight _has_ found a reliable means to permanently kill demons of all kinds. In Outland, deep in Blade's Edge mountains, grow a unique brand of crystals. These Apexis crystals emanate an aura that steadily, over years, increases the intelligence of nearby beings, such as the ogres residing there. That, however, is not why they are intriguing. These crystals can be used to power _banishing_ crystals. Ones that kill demons permanently. I plan to begin collecting those crystals in secret and transporting them back to the Nexus to study them. We may, potentially, find a way to infuse mortal weaponry with banishment abilities."

"This is indeed good news, Spellweaver," said Vonrastrasz. "Now, as for the preparations the Red Dragonflight will undertake..."

The next few minutes were spent discussing various ways to increase our military powers in secret, specific areas of militarization so that we could compensate for the gaps left by others. We dragons decided unanimously to take our members into our homes - The Nexus, the Emerald Dream, so on - and train in utmost secrecy there in aerial combat. I, however, added another thing. "There _is_ something else that my Flight can offer. Sargeras himself _must_ be dealt with. Problem is, he will be throwing his weight around. We must do the same thing."

"Verthelion," Ysera said, looking at me intently with her shimmering, shifting eyes, easily deciphering my intentions. "It is too much of a risk for us to take the front lines. We die, our Flights our left leaderless."

I sighed. Here it came. "As much as I loathe to say it, we may need to take a page out of Neltharion's book."

"What are you saying?" Malfurion snapped, looking at me with all the trust a stag does a bear.

"Grim Batol is filled with a high amount of precious metals. We can use the metal to create... to create armor for we Aspects, and leftovers can be used for any other purposes. Helping your weaponizing efforts, armoring other dragons, the likes. We have already created talon sheathes - that is, metal that can fit over our claws to aid in shredding - and a fair bit at that. Enough to arm several hundred drakes and dragons from each Flight." I shook my head. "But that's not the point!" I looked over at my fellow Aspects. "If we armor ourselves, we will be much more powerful. We _have _to use our powers in the next invasion. Sargeras will, and he is an engine of destruction. We will need everything we can get to balance out the scales. This armor will let us take to the skies - not neccesarily the front lines - with next to no risk."

A tense, awkward silence descended. Everyone looked at me, and I grimaced at their stares. "Look, I don't like the idea," I said. "Especially given _who_ was the previous one to use it, but it will be necessary. You have to see that."

Slowly, Nozdormu nodded. "Yes, I suppose it will be. Go ahead with your armoring plan."

I nodded. "I shall."

The Timeless One looked at the Warchief of the Horde and the King of the Alliance. "Commune with the Alliance and the Horde to decide what to do with spare metal. They do, after all, have the toughest military forces out of all mortals."

"Speaking of which," the King said. "I believe I had a way to make sure our two armies grow stronger without letting the Legion know."

"Oh?" asked Toron, crossing her arms and looking down suspiciously at the human beside her. "What would that be?"

"Arms race. Even after our factions signed a peace treaty seventy years ago, we've been on rocky terms. It wouldn't be too hard to believe we are engaged in an arms race against each other, when really our purpose is to fortify ourselves against the Legion's imminent attack. The civilians will believe it's an arms race, everyone _except us_ will think it is one."

"A cold war," she said, nodding. "Excellent idea. The Legion will never suspect a thing. We should wait a few years to start it, though. They may become suspicious if we all start militarizing the very moment they have revived Sargeras."

"Oh?" asked Gorrog. "And what's to stop the Legion from invading _now?_ To just march upon Azeroth at this very moment?"

"They're being very cautious," I reminded him. "They don't want to just charge after us, and they _know_ that we know. They'd have to be stupid not to, since I fought Kil'jaeden. They'll wait a few decades, then when they think our guard's down, launch the assault. But we'll be ready, and repel them once more."

Tariun laughed heartily. "Yeah, that's right, Aspect! I'll start training my priest 'n paladins as soon as this meeting ends. They shall not know the true meaning, of course. I'll come up with somethin'." He looked around at us, suddenly nervous. "Whatever was spoken in this room _can not_ leave it. Of course, I'm not speaking for the Aspects. But we can't rule out the possibility of members of our own factions being corrupted by the Legion, telling them, and ruining everything! Not to mention the fact that we'll have to pass on this information to those who succeed our positions, so we much choose _carefully_."

It didn't take long for the mortal leaders to leave the brownish-red tent the meeting was held in. They emerged into the the open air of the Howling Fjord and went their separate ways, however we five stayed back.

Kalecgos looked at me warily. "Are you certain of this plan, Verthelion?"

I nodded. "Yes. Sargeras will be taking the front lines, it is _imperative_ that we do the same to balance out the odds. I'm not saying we should go paw-to-paw with the Titan himself, just to wreak havoc on his armies as much as he will on ours. We should also practice our abilities. Maybe meet once a week or month somewhere - Wyrmrest perhaps - and spar."

"Although I _am_ curious," Ysera said. "Exactly why have you been making talon sheathes? And why have you not told us?"

I shrugged nervously, my skin prickling. "Well, I was saving them for an event that warranted using them. Like _this._ I didn't think they were important otherwise. Nobody's used one of them beyond testing purposes; when we distribute the talon sheathes, they'll be good as new." I frowned. "Don't look at me like that, it's a good idea!"

"Indeed it is," said the Dragonqueen's Prime. "Shall we reconvene every two decades atop Wyrmrest for an update?" he asked.

"Indeed," the other four of us said simultaneously.

After a few more minutes of exchanging pleasantries and farewells, the meeting ended. I teleported myself back to Grim Batol, and let out a sigh. There was a _lot_ to do.

* * *

><p><span>A few days earlier<span>

Sargeras

It felt good to be back.

The iron vrykul's body was puny, limited, and weak. Fragile to the extreme, slow, small, and all around inadequate for one of my cosmic stature. Still, it would suffice. It held far more holding ability than Medivh had, had nothing to resist my control, and it was _relaxing_ to be in a body of metal again, as I should be. It was good to be in a _body_ period.

I flexed my arms, my red hot fingers opening and closing rhythmically. All around me, my loyal army knelt in reverence. The air touching me shimmered, the black stone beneath my feet glowed with the heat I transferred into it. Shattered pieces of stone laid around the area from where I'd blown out the building shortly after draining the reptile's life essence to _complete_ the resurrection spell.

Summoned by the thought, my soul ached. How I loathed having the Light used on me. Still, it gave me a form once more. Kil'jaeden had done well; this more than made up for his failure in the Sunwell. Where _was_ he, anyway?

A shimmer of red light proceeded his arrival, just outside the floor of the revival chamber. He had compressed his form to accommodate my new stature, and dissolved his wings. His red skin was covered in black marks, and a long scar that hadn't been there before ran down his side. He seemed drowsy, and I could see through him that his mana was low. He knelt just like all the others.

"My Lord."

I calculated, then tensed my legs and pushed my strength through them. I sailed through the air and landed next to Kil'jaeden in a single bound. At least that was one advantage of the iron vrykul; with my strength in it, I was deceptively nimble.

"Rise, Kil'jaeden." He did so. "You have done exceptionally well with your plot to return me to physical form. You have outdone yourself. Tell me, did your plan extend beyond?"

"Somewhat, but not far," he admitted. "I had planned for the next and final invasion of Azeroth to take place eighty-six of their years from today. The wait is for any one of them who discovered our plot to fade from memory, leaving them wholly unprepared. Of course, you may edit this plan to your favor, Lord Sargeras."

"Why the wait? Do not tell me you are _afraid_ of Azeroth, Deceiver."

He paused. "We have had a zero percentage rate of success in our invasions there," he reasoned, looking down in the beginnings of fear. "Every time we have attempted, their defenders pushed us back. As of late, they have grown increasingly skilled in doing so. And with the appointment of the Twilight Dragonflight - "

"Twilight Dragonflight?"

"Ah, my apologies, Lord Sargeras. They did not exist in your time as Medivh."

"Yes, I'm honestly surprised I learned of your assault on the Sunwell in the first place. Do inform me."

"Slightly over an Argusian century ago, the Old Gods that infest that wretched world created a race of corrupt dragons to do their bidding, to replace the other Dragonflights. It was a good plan. They were powerful, brainwashed into obeying them, and their shadowy fire was devastating to other dragons. Unfortunately for the Old Gods, and for us, they defected, and have taken the place of the extinct Blacks, allied with the other Flights. They keep watch over Azeroth for any corrupting measures, and either contain, purify, or purge them as needed. We know from our few surviving satellites that the Red Aspect has recently been corrupted by an earthquake shifting the mineral Saronite closer to her home. The Twilights caught note of this and are rehabilitating her, and will likely discover the cause and move the Saronite elsewhere. They have been doing _very_ well at keeping us suppressed. Our void lord plan, the fel cannon march. Of course, I planted enough false starts to keep their focus away from my true plan."

This was... interesting news. A new race of dragons. "Such as the one I drained."

"Indeed. We had..." Kil'jaeden faltered. That meant he'd messed up. "We had originally captured a female, but several of its allies came and rescued it. The male stayed behind, since they could not leave without you returning."

"And WHY did I not see them?" I asked hotly, pebbles starting to float around me.

"The Twilight dragons are able to shift into another plane of existence, and bring those they want with them. Only they can control this realm, so it grants them nigh-infinite safety. We had erected a field around this area to deny them access to this realm, however your return must've damaged it, allowing all but one of them to escape once you have stabilized. Apologies, my Lord. An oversight on my part."

I let the pebbles drop. "An unforeseen consequence, bound to happen in any chaotic system. So. These dragons will have returned to Azeroth and told the rest of the Flights. Interesting." Dragons had long memories. They'd likely know of my return for centuries yet. Mortals, however... "If memory serves, the dragons often operate separate of the mortal races, yes?"

"Correct. They are usually aloof, however, your return to the physical plane may alarm them enough into speaking with them."

I waved a hand. "Then we shall _wait._ You have been doing that, yes? We have waited to destroy this pitiful world for ten thousand of its years. What's a few more? Order what camps we have to send up more satellites into moderate-height geosynchronous orbit around Azeroth. I want them watching every corner of Azeroth, sending information via high-efficiency teleportation back here. I want to be able to see every stone, every twig, every _ocean wave. _I don't care if you have to build them here and haul them to Azeroth. Get it done."

"Weaponized or not?"

I pondered it for a moment. "Have weaponized ones over each of the mortal faction cities, but otherwise spare the resources. They are not to be used until our actual invasion."

"Wyrmrest?"

"I'll handle Wyrmrest myself when the time comes. I want our regiments training around the clock, every second. No stopping, at all. Order the gan'arg and mo'arg to produce weapons in high concentrations. Field-deployed fel-cannons, one fel-reaver for every hundred of those, and prepared Forge Camps. I want them to be able to take the materials through a portal and set up a fully operational Forge Camp in no more than _one_ hour. And I want the Orod'in gan'arg to work nonstop on improvements to our weapons. Sharper axes, tougher reaver armor, the works." I looked around at the assembled demons around me, still kneeling. "GO!" No further word was needed, and the area around us was vacated immediately.

"If you do not mind waiting a moment, my Lord, I have something for you you may be delighted to see."

I raised a metallic eyebrow. "Oh? Do so, Kil'jaeden."

He bowed. "Of course." There was a shimmer of red light, and he was gone. A few moments later and Kil'jaeden returned, full size, with a weapon in each hand. He placed them down and contracted back into a form my size. I was stunned, looking at the weapon he'd held in his left.

I approached it. "Is that - "

"Yes, it is."

Without hesitation I grasped the hilt of the enormous sword. It reacted to my touch, knowing its master. It shrunk, and shrunk, and shrunk, until it was a proper size for my new and temporary form. I raised it before me, giving experimental swings, the muscle memory coming back as easily as magic and movement had. A decorative hilt, with a slitted red eye in the middle, surrounded by hardened, cracked lava. The sword's top half was broken off, creating wicked, jagged edges that were more than capable of carnage. Its metal was dark red, inscribed with blazing red runes that created an aura of fire around the entire thing, smoke rising into the air to mix with Argus's clouds.

"Gorribal," I said quietly, tracing a finger along the flat of my weapon. "It has been far, far too long since I have held this sword." I brought my left hand to clasp the hilt as well, and raised the sword into the sky. Fire surged upwards, a pillar of flame streaking through the sky and into the clouds, flickering ruby light dancing along the stone around us. After a few minutes I stopped the display of power, swinging Gorribal down to my right side. "And what is this other weapon you have brought me, Kil'jaeden?" I asked, looking over to it.

It was already my size, which was curious. A bit too small, in fact, as if a human or an orc had held it. But I recognized it all the same.

"My scepter," I said with wicked glee. I extended a hand and pictured the rod flying into my hand. The vision became reality, my scepter telekinetically pulled to me. It doubled in size to fit the vrykul body. A black metal rod, with white bands, shimmering white and black crystals adorning the head. I frowned upon holding it, and Kil'jaeden appeared to notice my displeasure.

"Apologies, my Lord. It was last used by the traitorous orc Ner'zhul. He overcharged its powers, and while I recovered it from him, I have not been able to restore its former power."

"It is of no consequence. The power it once held is such that I would need to be at _my_ full strength to reinvigorate it. It will still be more than enough." I tossed my jeweled scepter into the air, opening a dimensional rift around it and sealing it into a nether pocket, to be recalled at my command. I looked over to the floor of black stone, a still, indigo figure within it. I walked over to it, Kil'jaeden respectfully following to my right, behind me. I looked over at the... what was it? Ah yes, Twilight dragon.

"What do you suggest I do with this dragon?" I asked.

"It is your choice, my Lord."

"I want to hear your suggestion. You know the recent status of Azeroth far better than I."

He paused, considering this. "The Alliance and the New Horde have built a fleet of formidable aircraft. In combination with the five Dragonflights, we will be sorely without air superiority."

"And how might this dragon aid in fixing that?"

"During my attempted invasion at the Sunwell, a blue wyrm fought Brutallus."

"Ah yes, Brutallus. A perfect example of his race. What has become of him?"

"He died," my right hand said bluntly. "Not by the blue wyrm, though. He killed it quite easily, in fact. Mortals killed him after - I shall have to fill you in on these 'Kingslayers' later, among other things that have transpired - but when they did, his blood spilled. It resurrected the dragon as a skeletal Fel Wyrm, utterly bent to our will."

I chuckled. "I do believe I know where you are headed with this." Green lightning crackled up and down my right arm, into Gorribal. I raised the broken sword and pointed it at the dragon, fel energy surging outwards in ropes of lightning and into the dragon.

As if it gained new life, the Twilight dragon began to struggle in agony. It screeched, thrashed, contorted in ways that looked outright painful. It hissed and howled, roared, keened for mercy as I effortlessly sustained the energy.

Its flesh sizzled and bubbled, scales melting, flesh vaporizing as it continued to fight the no-doubt agonizing transformation. The shouts for me to _'Stop stop please stop!' _turned into wet gurgles as its throat melted away. It heart, brains, eyes, everything dissolved, until all that was left was a skeletal cadaver. Its spiked tail-club was gone, replaced by a single green orb. Its horns moved downward with sickening cracks, making it howl, until they jutted forwards, forming a sort of ring around its head. The horns that formed its crest were intact, and the dissolving of flesh had created fel-green webbing between them, like fish fins going down its neck. Its now-tattered wing membranes had, similarly, been tainted with my magic, turned a sickly emerald. Green mist filled its chest cavity, the occasional flash of dark blue lightning arcing between its ribs, and a purple light shone from its eye sockets. It rose shakily, standing on all fours, and looked my way.

It recoiled as if in pain.

"Rise," I told it. "You have been reborn into service of the Legion. You will be the ruler of my fel-wyrms, which shall be created en-mass when I next visit your world. You will be granted with the strength to rule them, to lead them into battle against Azeroth's air forces, but above all, you will serve me. Is this understood?"

The fel wyrm struggled. It stumbled over words, trying to fight my dominion. "Argh! N-nev-ye-ngh!" It looked down, then slowly back up. "N - no_nngh!_ N-ne. N-n-neve..."

Then the purple glow of its eyes snapped to green, and it stood straight up on all fours, towering over me but infinitely below me.

"Yes, my Lord."

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think!<strong>

**Next up is Section 5. **


	37. Chapter 37:Sinister Pact

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Huge thanks to dharak for being my beta and catching those embarrassing mistakes!**

**Chapter published 3/9/13**

* * *

><p><strong>Section 5:Legion's Grip<strong>

295 years, seven months, seven days, seven hours, seven minutes, fifty seconds after the Epilogue of Coup de What?

Amanthe

It was cold, it was wet, and it was dark.

I walked forward, not knowing where I was going. The ground below me was dark and gray. Even the grass stalks were hardened and dull, crunching like glass beneath my shoes. A dull gray mist surrounded me, obscuring sight, not even letting me catch a glimpse of the sky. Every now and then a weak gust of wind would push the mist around me, causing it to approach me on one side but recede on the other side, allowing me to see the black skeletons of dead, gnarled trees.

_Crunch, crunch, crunch _went the grass. I kept walking, swiveling my head from side to side, looking for... whatever it was that I was here for. I hugged my arms to my body, shivering as the chill wind undulated around me, my skin covered in water droplets from when the burning-cold fog nipped my skin. Several times I snapped my head around, certain there was a disembodied eye floating in the air,watching me, only to reveal it to be the knot of a desiccated tree.

_Maaaaaa._

I whirled around at the sudden noise, trying to peer through the mist. There was a form, four legged, in the gloom. I screamed and whipped out a dagger from... somewhere... and threw it at the creature. However the fog encroached again, biting me with its cold, and it seemed to absorb my weapon as it flew in. When the wind pushed the fog away from the side, the thing was gone.

I shook my head. I must be seeing things. I looked around, using the landmark of one of the dead trees to find my orientation, and headed that way. The heavy blanket of gray fog didn't abate, and the ground and grass stayed the same; cold and desaturated, breaking like glass under my feet. More and more decrepit trees began to surround me. In spite of the obscuring mist, I could see that I was walking through a forest.

I stumbled over a root, said root snapping into pieces as I tripped. I tried to balance myself, but landed on all fours. I got back up, brushing myself off. I grimaced; my hands were bleeding from where they'd been cut on the brittle grass.

_Maaaaaa._

I spun around. There, again, was the creature. It was closer now, so I could make out details. It was a goat, a black goat with tattered, messy fur, as tall as I and significantly longer. Its horns were a dark, nearly black purple, and from its open mouth dripped something black, like tar. I bit down a squeak when I saw its eyes. There were _seven_ eyes, one in the middle of its forehead and three on either side, creating a crown of eyes around its head. The eye furthest to the left was open, red iris glaring at me and taking in light through the slit pupil. All the other eyes made me want to throw up; glassy, gray, and unfocused dead eyes that reflected light like a mirror, forming six reflections of myself.

"By the Titans," I whispered to myself. My voice was strange and distorted, like I was speaking to myself from underneath a pool of water. I stepped backwards, reaching for my one remaining dagger, pulling it out of the scabbard that hadn't been there a moment before, which vanished in a moment. The goat and I stared each other down, seeing who would make the first move.

The goat charged with a guttural roar I didn't even know it could make. It lowered its head to charge at me, intending to impale me on its violet horns. I waited until it was almost at me, then shifted into the twilight realm. I stepped to the side and emerged back into reality, driving my dagger down to where it was -

Except it wasn't there.

_Maaaaaa._

I wasn't even where I was before. I was surrounded by the ruined, black skeletons of trees. The stone beneath me was devoid of grass, and the trees had grown out around me so thick that it was like a cage, and I couldn't see out. I looked around, trying to call on the Light to illuminate the area. Nothing happened. I summoned twilight flame to my hands, but not even a spark appeared. There was also that _annoying_ dull thrum in the air.

"Hello?" I asked. "Jason?" I spun around. The mist had receded, letting me see a little way into the wall of trees encircling me. It appeared solid all the way through. The dull thrum was getting louder. I briefly stuck a finger in each ear to see if I'd gotten water in there; nothing.

"Selriona?"

Still nothing, and the dull thrum was getting much louder. So much louder that, I noticed it wasn't a thrum at all. It was the galloping of _hooves._

A flicker of light drew my attention. A spot of orange, the sound of deafening hooves, and the crunching and cracking of trampled trees. Suddenly I understood what was happening. The goat was _charging_ at me, and I didn't know how but it was _breaking_ all the trees in its path. Though, considering how unhealthy the woods around me were, it couldn't be too difficult...

_Maaaaaa._

So why didn't I run for the woods? If it could smash through, so could I. Great idea, Amanthe. Let's try it. I ran for the cage of trees, the sounds of the goat getting _louder_ and _closer_ by the second. I took my one remaining dagger and sliced it at a tree. It bounced off as if the plant was made of iron. I cursed, then turned around to the sound of a particularly loud crashing, suddenly paralyzed in fear. The goat emerged from the woods and into my little clearing, but now it was changed. It was still black, with dark slime dripping from its mouth, seven eyes with six dead, and purple horns sharper than any sword. However, now it was on _fire_, red flames tinted with green burning along its hooves and back as it jumped up, bearing down at me, one good eye open wide.

_MAAAAAA!_

* * *

><p>"Guh! I shot up in my bed, cold sweat beading my forehead. I blinked several times, my heart thrashing about in my chest like a fish out of water.<p>

My vision cleared, and I blinked a few more times, my eyes wide open like an owl's. I looked around, trying to remember where I was.

Oh, right.

The building was relatively small. the roof so low I'd almost bump my head into it if I stood. It was made of black marble, with bright gray cracks running through it, specifically designed so that as little light would be reflected as possible. The bed I laid in was surprisingly soft, the sheets, mattress and pillows all varying shades of blue and red, all close to black in their brightness. The bed was also too large for just me, and the space to my left was conspicuously empty, the sheets ruffled and turned into a semi-cocoon as though someone had gotten out of them.

I looked to my right onto the night stand. The box's painted eye stared at me. I glared back at it, then reached a hand over, grabbed one of its spikes, and dragged it over to me.

Still sitting in bed, I maneuvered the various locks, shifting ledges, and hatches on the puzzle box, according to the manner in which I'd figured out had the best chance of opening it. The more I worked on it, the more I got the sense something was watching me, something unspeakably powerful and evil. I pushed the sensation down and kept working. Even if there _was_ something watching, it wouldn't see anything particularly interesting. I kept working at it. I was close, I _knew_ it. Over nearly three hundred years I'd gotten very close to opening it; I could feel the opening at the top loosen from time to time. Still, I had quite a ways to go, yet. At least it was a good brain teaser, and kept my thoughts flowing quickly._  
><em>

"Raah!" I shouted as I hit the apparent 'failsafe', the clue that I _had_ almost got it. The moment I moved the fiftieth latch into place above the fifth clasp, the entire box began to reshape itself, pieces moving back into their original shape. I dropped it away from me, letting it rattle on the sheets, lest one of the moving parts hit me. In a few moments I was back to square one and got a _nice_ little present in the back of my mind.

_'You cling to your life as if it has meaning... you will learn soon enough. And then you will teach the others.'_

_'Tell it to someone who cares,'_ I returned to it, setting the box aside. I peeled myself out of bed and walked over to the closet. After changing out of my nightclothes into a violet shirt and pants, both filled to the brim with wool and other insulators, I walked out of the room into the rest of the inn.

The change in temperature was immediate. While personal rooms were warmed by machines, making it nice and toasty, relatively little of that heat transferred to the main room of the inn, and it was 'too expensive' to heat the entire place.

The majority of the residents of the inn were goblins, sitting around the table where meals were served. Most of them carried the smell of gunpowder, so I assumed it was another flight group from... ? I looked closely at one woman, her jacket shimmering slightly with the slivers of tiny white crystals. Dalaran. A group from Dalaran. I didn't see Jason among them, which meant he was outside in the biting, cracking cold.

I approached the inkeeper's desk. He was a stout, short goblin who - like most everyone else - wore heavy, black clothes to ward off the chill. His left ear was half as long as the other, looking like it had been bitten off near the end. Knowing the local wildlife, it very well may have been. His red eyes scanned over me, briefly showing interest, then dulled back to boredom as he recognized me. "Yeah? What can I do for you?"

"I would like a mead basted caribou and some honeymint tea," I said. "Two cups of the tea, two slices of the meat."

He nodded. "That'll be two gold."

I narrowed my eyes. "You said it was one gold and fifty silver last week."

He shrugged. "Yeah, well, supply dropped. Not many caribou around this part of the year. Some stupid migrating thing or something. You got the money or no?"

I rolled my eyes and dug a hand into my right pocket, fishing out the gold I kept with me as spare change, handing it over to Innkeeper Kirsk Brassknob.

"Thank you for your business. Let me just go get it." He turned around and opened a door behind him, shouting into the yellowish light and wafting heat. "Two honeymint tea and two caribou! On the double!" He closed the door before I could get curious enough to look into it, returning to me. "We'll have your food out in a jiffy. Why don't you take a seat until then, miss?"

I rolled my shoulders. "May as well, thank you." I made my way over to one of the side chairs, near the edges of the inn, not wanting to sit next to the group of goblins discussing air currents and downdrafts on their most recent trip, as well as - ugh- politics.

"Hear the Horde just made a huge upgrade to their airship armor. They say it'll make the Alliance's new cannons useless."

"Who's 'they'?"

"My sources. You don't need to know."

"Yeah well, I hear that the Alliance is upgrading their siege tanks. Napalm, electromagnetic shocks, even magical shields."

"Those two factions are going to kill each other."

"Tell me about it."

I sighed, reclining against the fur chair. I opened up my link, the familiar pressure blossoming along my head, right above my ears. _'Hey, good morning.'_

_'Good morning,'_ Selriona replied. _'How're things up in the Storm Peaks?'_

I sighed in both real life and into the link. _'It's cold, it's bright, and it's windy. Did I mention the cold?'_

_'You did.'_

_'It's cold.'_

It was her turn to sigh. _'It was your idea to go there to keep an eye on Ulduar. How's that going, by the way?'_

_'Meh, same old same old.' _I noticed a few goblins moving over to me. _'Hang on a moment.'_ I took my food and drink from the chef on a plate. "Thank you." He bowed overly lavishly, as if that would result in the inn getting an extra large tip - I'd already paid! - and without a word, returned. _'So as I was saying, same old same old. I'm going to be going to take another weekly observation in a few days, but I don't expect anything new. The Watchers have rebuilt centuries ago.'_

_'Wonder why they don't leave Ulduar? I mean, Yogg-saron's _gone._'_

_'It _is_ a Titan city,' _I reasoned, setting my food and drink on one of the chair's arm rests, eating from them. _'They can't just leave it. There's a lot of very high-tech stuff in there that they really can not let get out into the hands of us lesser, 'fleshy' races.'_

_'Hmm, true.'_

_'How're things in the Amethyst Sanctum?' _I asked.

_'Well, the eggs are still doing well. It makes sense, I _am _keeping them in the twilight realm until they hatch. They should start that in four days.' _The grin in her voice was unmistakable. _'So, how're you doing? Any nightmares recently?'_

I froze. Did she know? She couldn't possibly know, it was impossible. To date, Jason was the only one who knew I still had the puzzle-box. It was impossible for her to know. But then, she _did_ have Nalestrasza living in her mind. Maybe _she_ found out, then told Selriona about it. I wouldn't put it past the psuedo-Red.

If she did, then honesty was the best policy. _'One. Don't really remember much of it. Something about... fire and a goat. That's about all I remember.' _Which was true. Even now, as I ate my basted caribou and drank my warming tea, the heat radiating throughout my body, outwards from my stomach, the memory of the intense horror was slipping away steadily.

_'Hmm. Wonder if it means anything.'_

_'Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't. At either rate, it's pretty much gone now, so there's no point trying to interpret it.'_

_'You're right,' _she consoled. We spent the rest of the morning chatting and catching up, as I steadily finished off my breakfast. Once done, I delivered the empty plate, utensils, and cup back to the innkeeper and headed outside. The group of goblins was still in the same place, I idly noted. That meant they didn't have anywhere to go, and would probably be here for... a month.

I neared the door and picked up one of the shades designed to keep me from going snow-blind. It was a deceptively simple, yet ingenious method the goblins of K3 used to keep the glare of the icy snow of the Storm Peaks from blinding everyone. It had also been invented by gnomes, but they'd never admit that.

I didn't put them on quite yet, though, and returned to my room to put on a coat. I definitely needed it to go outside. It was black, to retain heat better, and so bulked up it gave me some trouble moving, with a hood that nearly covered my whole face and obscured my peripheral vision. I hadn't slipped into it for ten seconds before starting to sweat, so I hurried back outside. I placed on the shades, making me unable to see in the relatively dark building, and stepped outside into the Storm Peaks.

As I had told Selriona, the Storm Peaks were cold, bright and windy to the extreme. The little town of K3 served as a sort of 'stepping stone' into the higher peaks. Today would be a sunny day, not a cloud in the sky, which meant the special, Peaks-Grade sunglasses were absolutely required to step outside. When it wasn't sunny, it was dark and miserable, with either snow, freezing rain, hail, or all three. K3 was in a plateau base, where the wind, strong enough to toss someone into the air and carry them around like a kite, was reduced to simply making it hard to keep your footing. There were also no steep, ninety degree cliffs to fall down, it was marginally warmer...

Why had I decided to take _Ulduar? _What could _possibly_ have possessed me to take that position upon myself?

I found Jason in a back corner of K3, his back to the wall to keep some of the howling, whistling wind out of his face.

"Hey," he greeted upon seeing me. "I see you're up."

I smiled warmly at him. "Yeah. You said you had something to show me?" I asked.

He nodded. "Yeah. I was helping the hunters find some more food last week, while you were trekking to Ulduar to check up on it. And, well, I found a lookout I want to show you."

"Oh?" I asked. One of the few good things about the Storm Peaks _were_ the lookouts. The clear air and high altitude made vantage points highly sought after. Though few were willing to actually _go _to the Peaks to see them, those who did were supposedly rewarded with a view they would never forget. "Are we going now?"

"Yep. I didn't want to wake you. I've already had breakfast."

"Alright. Let's get going."

"Should we tell Brassknob?"

"Nah. Nobody in this town cares if you leave as long as you come back, and if you don't, they've become pretty jaded after living _here_ for so long." Here, in arguably the worst weather on all of Azeroth, conveniently _right_ next to Icecrown Glacier, home of the brainless undead, a land forever cursed to infamy by a madman and a traitor, few people dared to come. Many didn't live long, underestimating the winds and the cold. Of course, I had spared no expense making sure Jason and I were both ready. I had my twilight flame to warm us, levitation for the winds, and if worst came to worst, I could portal us to Grim Batol. "They won't think twice."_  
><em>

"We'll be fine, Amanthe. It's not far, and we don't have to go to the main peaks to get there."

"And the wildlife?"

He scoffed. "This time of year? _What_ wildlife? Come on," he said, peeling himself off the wall that defined the boundaries of K3. We headed to the gates and showed the guards the card that meant we were allowed to live here.

"Be safe out there," one said, pressing a gloved hand against his glasses, pushing them back up his long, beaklike nose. "Very cold."

"I know," I said. "We've been outside K3 before, we'll be fine."

He grunted. "Just be back by nightfall. It gets even colder then."

I rolled my eyes. With how far north we were, the time the sun would be up would be almost a whole twenty-four hours in its own right.

"We will," I said. I turned to Jason. "Lead the way, Jason."

"With pleasure. Come on, this way. It's to the west." Jason took the lead, his furred boots crunching on the ice, the spikes on the bottom securing him on the otherwise slick surface. I followed after him in much the same way, tethered to the hard-packed snow by the same mechanism. Wind howled through the air, but with the coats, and a shield of Light around the both of us, it didn't get _too_ too cold. Though the fact that it was still dark didn't help matters.

So we hiked... and hiked... and _hiked._ The snow had a steady incline downwards, one that slowly but surely increased, so before long I had to be careful even with my spiked boots, lest gravity suddenly get the better of me. We were nearing the southwestern ring of mountains, the black stone spires rising up before us like the spiked teeth of some wild beast. The sun was still rising, even though it was a clear day, letting me see Azeroth's shadow clearly; a dark blue mass near the horizon, its top tinged with blurred red.

The decline stopped, then grew into a ramp upwards as we approached the stone mounds that separated the Storm Peaks from Crystalsong Forest, towering far above the woods. Jason led me through a series of narrow cracks in the mountainside, climbing higher and higher on a nearly vertical incline until we reached a little plateau.

"Well, here we are," he said.

My jaw dropped. "Wow..."

The scene before me was nothing short of breathtaking. To my left was the orange glow of the sun, painting a canvass of purples, reds and blues along the horizon, as if the sky itself had been set ablaze. Far in front of me, to the south, were the hints of wispy snowstorm clouds over Dragonblight. The truly amazing part was the Crystalsong Forest below me. The area of the crystallized regions had increased over the centuries, and now the entire area was an expanse of purple ground, cracks radiating vibrant white energy into the air. Colossal crystallized trees filled the area down below. These trees were not whole; parts of them were suspended, hovering around a central core of arcane power, their gem-like leaves scintillating in the light and swaying in the breeze. The rising sun's orange light reflected and refracted within them, making them look like they were on fire. Even from so far away and so far up, I could hear them singing like wind chimes, emanating an aura of wonder and majesty. Nothing obscured our view. Not smog, not clouds, not mountains.

"Jason, this is... amazing!"

"There's a ledge here," he said, walking over to the edge of the ring. He sat down on a snow-covered precipice, one that I saw jutted out in a peculiar pattern that actually made a reclined _seat._ I went over and joined him. The ice was cold on my back and legs, but the coat balanced it out. And I was too stunned by the view to care. "It's these moments that remind me why I came to see what your job is like."

I looked over at him. "It's more than a job, Jason. It's a charge. A duty to carry out. Almost like military service, but not always about fighting. A lot of it is tracking, and curing."

"Like Ulduar?" he asked.

I nodded. "Yeah, like Ulduar. Nothing's happening there, thank the Titans, but you can never be to sure. Especially given _what _used to be trapped there." An especially chilly breeze swept over me, and I shivered. I scooched over closer to Jason and leaned into him, sharing our body heat to warm myself further.

"When are you going there again?" he asked.

"Next week. I'm still recovering after last time," I said, rubbing the small electric burn on my right side, right below my ribs at an especially sensitive part of my torso. "Who knew that the electric wards were so _sensitive_ to movement?"

He placed an arm over my shoulders. "Well, now you know, and at least you're fine." He sighed. "I wish you'd stop putting yourself in these situations. You crazy woman, you are going to get yourself killed one of these days."

I grimaced. "Eh, I'm three hundred and twenty five years old. Way I figure, I'm living on borrowed time as it is."

"Don't say that! You've got a lot more life to live. There's a lot more to _do._ There's always something new to do and explore."

"Like what?" I asked. "I've seen Outland, from Netherstorm to Nagrand to Shadowmoon. I've seen Kalimdor and the Eastern Kindgoms top to bottom. We spent our first anniversary in Pandaria. Northrend, check. I've lived through the Lich King, the Old Horde, the New Horde, the Cataclysm, the following Horde-Alliance war. You start to see patterns after a while. You're only about half my age, you wouldn't understand."

"Only you could make me feel that young," he chuckled. "Even though I'm a hundred and eighty."

"Let's just enjoy the sunrise while we can," I said.

And so we did, leaning against each other, looking down at the Crystalsong Forest. The sun rose higher and higher, the orange orb turning yellow and brightening rapidly, Azeroth's shadow falling below the horizon as the flame colors along the sky cooled to a tranquil, crystal-clear blue. Slowly, the reddish light seeped out of the crystal trees and they returned to their regular hues of blazing white and blue.

"You had a nightmare, didn't you?" he asked suddenly.

I jumped, sitting straight up. "How did you know?"

"You didn't wake up when I did, and you tried to solve that _thing_ the night before."

I sighed. "Yeah. Don't even remember it anymore, but yeah."

"Why do you even keep that box around? All it does is give you nightmares, let an Old God whisper to you - "

"I know better than to listen to it!"

" - and it's impossible to solve anyway. It's corrupt, so why do you keep it with you?"

"It's _not_ impossible to solve, Jason! I've almost got it. Another few years and I'll have cracked it."

"Heard that before."

"For real this time."

"Heard that too," he said, smiling widely.

"You're impossible."

"You're stubborn."

"I give up. Males."

He raised an eyebrow. "Males?"

I shook my head. "I mean, men. Titans, I've been around dragons too long."

A growl cut through the air. Jason chuckled next to me. "Hungry? Sounds like you've got their appetite too. Didn't you just have breakfast?"

I rolled my eyes as another rumble sounded, but not from me. "Look who's talking." I pulled myself onto my feet, as did my husband. "Come on, let's get back to K3."

He nodded. "Of course. Lead the way, Amanthe."

* * *

><p><span>Sargeras<span>

"Ialion!" I barked.

The fel wyrm instantly stopped his training. The green mist within his chest cavity stopped pouring out over the circular crater he practiced in, and the flashes of twilight lightning across his bones subsided. The dummies he practiced with stopped in their movement. He looked over to me and bowed his head to the ground. "My Lord."

"Rise. How goes your practice? What is the status of your prowess?" I looked over at the dummies he'd been practicing with, conglomerates of softened stone that greatly resembled dragons, in both behavior and texture.

"Growing steadily, as always, Lord Sargeras. If I had to put a numerical estimate on it, I would gauge my strength at approximately three-quarters of Kil'jaeden's.

I frowned. Considering an Aspect had almost beaten my right hand, _with_ an army backing him up, that didn't bode well for the air force I was building. "Not enough." I raised Gorribal and pointed it at Ialion. A crackling beam of red lightning surged outwards from my weapon and into Ialion, who roared in pain. I sustained the magic for a second before stopping, lowering my sword besides me. "That should be sufficient for the invasion."

"Invasion?" he asked. "We are carrying it out now, then?"

"Not quite yet, but very soon. The gan'arg and mo'arg have finished building the weaponry I requested, and though Azeroth is unwary, the wretched Alliance and Horde are engaged in an arms race and grow stronger by the day. I have already relayed this news the Kil'jaeden. Prepare yourself, Ialion. You will be coming with me personally for your army once we step foot on the world."

The fel wyrm perked up. "Thank you, my Lord. When are we departing?"

"Not quite yet. While we are capable of landing in Azeroth, we lack the portal infrastructure to carry out such an invasion, especially one from multiple points like I have planned. Which is why I shall be departing solo momentarily. Go to the Volcanic Fields and await further instruction there with Kil'jaeden and Mephistroth."

He bowed his head. "Of course, Lord Sargeras. I shall depart at once." The skeletal dragon reared onto his hind legs, leaving deep grooves in the earth. He flapped his wings and, with a roar, flew off into the air, fel mist trailing behind him.

I held out my left hand, the right one still clasped on Gorribal's handle. A blue vortex appeared in the air, and out fell my jeweled scepter. I grabbed it in my left hand, and began to channel magic into it. A portal opened around me, arcane light flooding the air. I sustained the magic for the proper duration, and left through the portal, while it closed in my wake.

It was instantly dark, but the glowing of my metallic skin cast flickering red lights around me. I tossed my scepter into the air once more, its services not needed for the moment, and an arcane vortex once again stored it in a pocket dimension. I held my left hand up and formed a fireball in it, before letting it fly out of my palm. It split into three fireballs, burning brightly, that began to rotate around my head, illuminating the area. It was an underground chamber, the roof high above me, the halls too wide for me. Barely-glowing blue runes were inscribed on every area of the room, seemingly depleted of power. I stood in the middle of a hexagonal floor-pattern, and I wasn't alone.

An iron construct slammed its fist down on me. It rebounded off my concentrated shadow shells, barely weakening me in the least. My right hand flew outwards, stabbing the jagged tip of Gorribal into its chest. I fed fire along my sword, engulfing the construct in flame. I pulled out my sword and kicked the construct back into a group of advancing Earthen, where it then exploded and took them all out. I spotted the hallway they'd come through; the entire complex of Uldos was underground, and my prize, unseen by all except my satellites, was deeper.

I progressed further. Iron dwarves jumped out from alcoves. One tried to fry me with an arc of chain lightning, but I simply held up my left hand and clenched a fist, instantly crushing its neural processor. It dropped limply. Still holding up my arm, I moved it to the left, sending the deactivated body flying into a group of iron dwarves brandishing double-bladed axes. They flew to the side and impacted the metal walls with enough force to leave craters. They shattered into pieces. I didn't even need to stop walking forwards.

A double stairwell lead upwards, and I knew from how the Pantheon constructed their complexes that, despite it leading upwards, that was the direction. Something magical pricked me from behind. I spun around in a full circle rapidly. Halfway through I released Gorribal from my hand and sent it after the iron vrykul caster, before continuing on. There was a scream of pain behind me, and I held out my right hand to clasp my sword as it returned.

Eventually I reached a pair of titanic constructs. They were tall, hooded, stony things twenty meters tall, baring a great door. They charged at once, electricity crackling on their fists. I raised Gorribal, got on one knee, and slammed the tip into the ground. Two fissures opened in the earth, surging towards the constructs. It swallowed them whole, and snapped shut with a _crunch._ I walked up to the immensely tall door and raised a foot, kicking. The doors, tens of times higher than me, made of the toughest metal the Pantheon had, with the most secure locks they could make, flew inwards like they were toys, revealing a downward spiral of a hall. It was darker here, despite my fiery method of illumination, with shattered stained glass paintings on the wall crawling with pale gray tentacles.

_'Well well well,'_ said a suave masculine voice in my head, hiding barely concealed, delicious _anger_ and _rage_. _'Look who we have here. A warden, checking on his prisoner, unaware of the impending revolt.'_

The hundreds of tendrils lining the path downward came to life, shadow magic and poison flying out towards me. The first volley forced me to take a step back, taking out a large chunk of my shadow armor. I raised a flaming shield around myself, however, and raised Gorribal into the sky. Fel fire crackled along my sword as the second volley harmlessly peppered my shield, and I let loose a volley in all directions, fel pyroblasts singing the tendrils and forcing them to retract.

_'Argh! How dare you, _titan! _You will suffer for your atrocities!'_

I laughed as some strange creatures came up from the hall. They had a single whiplike tendril for one arm, and clawed, three fingered hands on the other. They had no eyes, and long trunk-like snouts. "Do you even know who I am?" I asked. As the four of them approached me I spun around, swinging my sword in a large arc. The passively burning fires on it, combined with the sharpness and my strength, tore right through the creatures, slicing them in half and letting the smoldering bodies slide apart.

_'The form you take matters not. I may not be able to escape this prison you have built, but I will have my vengeance!'_

"And here I thought you Old Gods were masters of manipulation, slowly turning your enemies to your sides. I'm disappointed."

There was a howl of rage, and the ground beneath me heaved. A ring of white, spiked tentacles erupted around me and, as one, slammed downwards. I leaped above them before they could, and pointed Gorribal straight down, clasping the hilt with both hands. I dropped straight down, and on impact the devastation was incredible. The force of impact made the ground roll outwards from me like it was liquid. A ring of compressed air made the tendrils lean back, while trails of fire radiated outwards from me and burned them. Before too long, the Old God was forced to retract them.

"I did not imprison you!" I said. "I did not take away your rule. Do you not know who I am? Have you not seen me before, walking this world in another form?"

Hesitation. _'Sargeras,__'_ the eldritch abomination whispered, the sharp bite of its anger diminished. Shame. _'The Destroyer of Worlds himself, 'gracing' me with his presence. What has brought you here? Madness, certainly. I would know. You are positively mad.'_

"Is it madness to see this universe for what it truly is? Chaotic in nature, that is what it will be reduced to. And the sooner the better. But I am not here to argue for a philosophy we both share. I am here under a flag of truce," I said, continuing to walk down, down, down.

_'You could have fooled me, titan, with the way you tore through my minions to reach me.'_

"Merely self defense. You sent the corrupted constructs to attack me."

_'Yes, yes. I thought you were one of the wretched Pantheon. So, what is this of truce?'_

"Your armies and mine. Surging across the surface of this world, scouring the Pantheon's races." The slope downwards ended, and emerged into a giant, cylindrical chamber made of cracked, dark blue stone.

_'An impressive notion, but what have you to offer?'_

"Your freedom from the chains that bind you. The world you once owned yours again. Usually, I scour the world I visit clean, returning it to its chaotic origins, but in this case, its chaotic origins lie with you ruling it. And so it will be again, if you ally with me. Otherwise... I can not promise your survival."

A maniacal laugh. _'Your notions of blackmail are unneeded. I have long since longed for a chance to end these pathetic insects, who killed the others of my kind. I am the only one left, you know. It's been so long since we evolved in that tidal pool... so long since I could last wrap my tendrils around a mountain... your deal interests me, Dark Titan. What assistance would you need of me? My minions are unable to leave my prison, the Twilight's Hammer is unable to accomplish much with the traitors keeping an eye on them, and the Naga are loathe to leave their underwater nations.'_

"I require you to use your minions to open portals to Argus so that my armies may spill forth. I lack the power and presence on Azeroth to do so on the required scale. We will strike swiftly and fiercely. I have orbital platforms in place around Azeroth to bombard the mortal cities at a moment's notice; all I need do is send the signal from this world, and fire shall rain. I also require you to send whatever armies you have, post portal opening, to Mount Hyjal to aid in taking the World Tree. I shall drain its powers for myself. In the process, the blessings of the Aspects will be gone."

_'Including the traitor's,'_ the Old God hissed in excitement. _'The traitor's blessing that keeps me chained, despite having shattered my shackles long ago. Free to rise from this cursed earth. What locations do you need opened?'_

"I need a portal opened as close to Hyjal's Summit as you can manage. I need one as close to Ulduar as you can manage; I myself will visit Wyrmrest Temple. It would also be well to _try_ to open a portal at each of the Alliance and Horde's capital cities. If it succeeds, excellent. If not, they will be good divergences. Also, send whatever element manipulators you have to Un'goro Crater and the Searing Gorge, try to erupt them."

_'An impressive plan, Sargeras. I assume this is only the beginning of it. The basics of it.'_

"Of course it is! I have planned for every eventuality. Not even that dragon with a portion of my _dear_ brother's power will be able to counteract me."

_'You would do well to not be prideful. It has lead to your downfall before. Me, I have been careful. I, Tsa'thannon, have kept my influence minimal, buried my tomb beneath the surface so that none will find me. And so, I have survived. You, I hear you _died._'_

I roared, slamming Gorribal down onto the ground, channeling fire below in thick streams. The ground heaved and bucked. "And I have come closer to eradicating these insects than you ever have! Do not insult me, 'god'. Now, shall you ally with me or not?"

A moment of hesitation. Then, a slim white tendril burst from the ground. It moved slowly and sluggishly, as if an invisible force was holding it back. It snaked up to me. Understanding, I willed the temperature of my left hand to cool, the rest of my body heating up slightly. I gripped the tip of the tentacle and shook it. _'We have a deal. I request you open a portal here to Argus, so that I can mass my Faceless on your world. Uldos only has so much room, after all.'_

I smiled wickedly. "It shall be done," I said, releasing the tentacle, which slid back beneath the ground. I let the heat return to my left hand, making it glow red. I opened an arcane vortex and grabbed my jeweled scepter. "As soon as you are able to open the portals, send a Faceless messenger through. They need not be big portals, but large enough that we can send through infrastructure and set up fortified bases within minutes."

_'Certainly. What shall you do?'_

"Tell my subordinates. During the invasion itself..." I sent a mental picture to the Old God, and I couldn't help but picture a ring of fangs turning upwards in a smile.

_'Excellent. Well then...'_

Shadows condensed around me, forming towering 'Faceless'. A couple, a dozen, a hundred.

We both spoke at once. "Let the games begin."

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><p><strong>Please review, let me know what you think, it means a lot!<strong>


	38. Chapter 38:First Strike

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels.** **Blizzard does.**

**Thanks to dharak for looking over this chapter!**

**Chapter published 3/16/13**

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><p><span>Sargeras<span>

"The time has come," I said to my servants. The dark sky rumbled with lightning. Ialion sat before me on his haunches, blank green eyes staring intently at me, waiting for my order. Kil'jaeden stood at his full size, his hands behind his back. He had his wings out, and wore a replica of the necklace he had lost at the Sunwell so many years ago, amplifying his already notable arcane power. Mephistroth, current leader of the dreadlords, stood with his blue armor, wings folded tightly against his back. All around us, demons and Faceless worked tirelessly to put the final touches on our weapons and machines, keeping a respectful distance from us. It had only been roughly a week since I established an alliance with the Old God, and now it was _time._ The Twilight's Hammer gets things done when under the direct orders of an Old God, hunted or not.

"Tsa'thannon has sent us the message that, in a few hours, we shall be ready to embark to Azeroth. The defenders of that pitiful world have foiled several of his portal attempts, however. Ironforge, Darnassus, the Exodar, and Silvermoon City will not be accessible to us directly, and neither shall the Searing Gorge. The locations that _shall_ be accessed are the Darkwhisper Gorge, which shall be our staging ground towards the World Tree. Un'goro is also being worked on by the Twilight's Hammer, and the supervolcano can be expected to erupt a few days after we begin our invasion."

I looked around at them. They were still listening intently. "Stormwind, Orgrimmar and Darkspear Isle, Thunder Bluff, Lordaeron and the corresponding Undercity, and Bilgewater Harbor are all ready to be opened to us, as is Ulduar. Mephistroth."

"Yes, Lord Sargeras?"

"You shall take the forces I have given you and lead them along the Eastern Kingdom, ensure that minimal support leaves the cities for the World Tree's defense. Use the cannons I am giving you to siege the enemy, and plan your attacks around the bombardment schedules I have given you. You may delegate any of your subordinates that you wish to carry out the same strategy among the cities that are in Kalimdor. Burn their ships, shatter their air power, destroy their morale. Your goal is not destruction, we can worry about that later. Priority number one is keeping the mortals bottled up. Our satellites report that most of their armies _are_ within their cities, so keeping them immobilized as best we can is our first priority. They will escape eventually, through portals, but they will be forced to leave some behind to defend. Of course, if the opportunity arises, raze everything."

He bowed, a clawed hand crossing his chestplate. "It shall be done, my Lord."

I turned to the Deceiver."Kil'jaeden, I am putting you in charge of the World Tree offensive. Your task is to set up a heavily fortified base and, with the aid of Tsa'thannon, push to destroy Nordrassil as quickly as possible. You shall have fel-reavers, cannons, and a large part of our forces."

I focused my dark gaze on the fel wyrm. "Ialion, you shall come with me to Dragonblight. There, I shall destroy Wyrmrest to demoralize the dragons, and give you your army to command. You have the communication implant, yes?"

He raised a foreleg, showing the black ring inside the bone. "Indeed, Lord Sargeras. I have been practicing with it, and am able to use it with great ease at command."

"Good. Once you have your army, divide power among smaller groups. Then communicate with Mephistroth and Kil'jaeden as to who needs how much aerial support. Most likely, it will be the World Tree offensive that needs the most, since the dragons will defend it with vigor. Comprehend?"

He nodded, green mist undulating around his skull. "Understood, my Lord."

"Excellent. Once I have finished with you, I shall head to Ulduar to lead the army taking it, and once that is done I shall go to the World Tree, provided it is not destroyed. Now, the defenses we have spotted around Mount Hyjal..." We spent the remaining length of our time outlining the specifics we'd learned from our satellites. The current location of the Alliance and Horde aerial fleets, places to fortify, other locations to leave open, so on and so forth. Our armies already knew where to go when the portals opened, and would automatically follow the leadership of my servants when they arrived.

A shivarra tentatively approached me, bowing deeply once I turned around to her. "My Lord, a message has come from the Old God. It is time."

"Then what are you standing here for? GO!"

"Right away," she said, turning around and sprinting towards the portal she was supposed assigned to.

I looked back at my three servants. "You know what to do. Kil'jaeden, Mephistroth, go. Ialion, with me." There was a chorus of three 'As you wish', and then the two of us were alone. I held out my left hand, a vortex of arcane energy materializing briefly and dropping my scepter into my grasp. I spun around in a circle, weaving arcane magic on to it. My jeweled scepter shone with silvery blue light, which expanded in an orb to engulf both the fel wyrm and I. Within moments, the scenery around us changed.

All around us was an endless sheet of ice, farther than even my eyes could see, with a pillar of metal and light far in the distance. The red-hot metal of my body melted the snow beneath me and made steam rise up. Gargantuan bones the size of Ialion's stuck haphazardly out of the ground, with some being picked by vultures. Some of these vultures noticed my arrival and attempted to flee.

I stepped forward and extended my scepter, channeling darkness along it. Shadowy ropes shot outwards, wrapping around the avian creatures and reeling them in, dead by the time they reached me. A sizzling sound made me frown and look at my scepter. It was sparking, white lights shooting off of it. It had damaged it so much just to bring myself and Ialion here? That disgusting orc _had_ ruined it. It would be days before I could use it again. No matter.

I tossed it into the air, once again placing it into a pocket dimension.

"Well then," I said. "Let us begin. Ialion, do _not_ send your forces after Wyrmrest. It shall be rubble soon enough, understand? Take most of them, including yourself, and head to Hyjal to aid Kil'jaeden. Divide power among them as you see fit. Remember how I taught you to raise others?"

"Of course, Lord."

"Use that on any dragons you kill. Every one of them that falls shall bolster your forces. And now..."

I raised Gorribal into the air, channeling vast amounts of fel energy, the huge amounts of magic heating up my iron vrykul body even more. I let the spell fly, ribbons of fel magic extending in all directions, seeping into the snow and ice below us.

The ground heaved and shook. The bones around us and below us began to change their form, moving and shifting and cracking. One very large group of bones, however, refused to move no matter how much energy I channeled. Very well. Once I have my true power, that giant dragon too shall serve me. Perhaps even replace Ialion, depending on how much intelligence it retains.

A dozen at a time, the ice-covered snow burst upwards. Bony claws gripped the surface, leaving long gashes. Green wings reached to the sky. Roars of anguish and victory filled the air as I rapidly broke each one of them to my will. It only took a few minutes, but before long there was an army of thousands of fel-wyrms encircling me, choking mist spilling from their bodies and across the shattered and cratered snowy wasteland. I telepathically reached out to them.

_'You shall follow Ialion to wherever he may tell you! You answer only to Ialion and I, and other leaders he may appoint within your ranks.'_ I turned my telepathy towards Ialion. _'Now, go! Lead them across to sea!'_

"It shall be done, my Lord." He must've sent a telepathic command across to the assorted wyrms, because they took to the air with roars. The flapping of wings filled the air, wind buffeting me from all directions without effect as the aerial army left, flying full speed towards Hyjal.

I looked after them until they were gone. Then I let the pain I'd been holding back show through. I knelt, groaning. That spell hadn't been good to me. Channeling such high magic through such a weak body had heated me up dramatically, and the icy cold caused me intense thermal shock. It was painful, but as I cooled back down the pain diminished to an insignificant ache throughout my body. This place was too cold. I'd better change that.

I spun around with Gorribal in a circle, the flames along it leaving a fiery ring around me. I envisioned the flames being grabbed by an invisible hand and forming a field of scorching heat around me, and the vision became reality, melting the snow around me and increasing the ambient temperature. I spotted Wyrmrest, and sprinted there as fast as I could. With my titanic strength channeled through an iron vrykul, it was quick. My powerful legs propelled me at high speed towards the spire of disgusting _light_ and _hope_ and _order. _Patrol dragons and drakes filled the air, but it was easy to send felfire pyroblasts at each of them, the fireballs impacting with unerring accuracy. One shot, one kill, none to go back and report. Not like it would matter soon anyway._  
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I stopped outside of Wyrmrest. The draconic defenders were already mobilizing. Red, green, purple, blue and bronze drakonids and dragonspawn rushed at me from their patrols, and drakes of all colors filled the sky above me. I paid them no mind as I planted Gorribal into the snow beside me, the flames along it melting a puddle around the shattered sword. I relaxed myself and looked down to my right. I curled my right hand towards me, a shimmering orb of black in it, closing as I clenched a fist. I took a step back and thrust my right hand out, unleashing hell.

A gaping black vortex opened in my palm, exerting an inescapable gravitational field before me. Snow crumbled, rising and falling into the black hole in heavy chunks, leaving me and Gorribal before a great cliff, my force of will directing where the gravity acted. The fire keeping me warmed was pulled in almost immediately. The attacks fired by the incoming dragons all veered off course, absorbed harmlessly by the event horizon. Wyrmrest began to groan in stress, air forming visible belts as it flowed into the black hole to be lost forever, the occasional flash of dim red light along the black hole indicating the last cry of a piece of matter.

Dragons fell in, caught by the intense gravity. They screamed in pain as they neared the event horizon, the rapidly scaling gravity tearing their bodies to bloody shreds before they fell into the singularity's grasp. Some tried to fly away. Most of them were already too close and fell in despite their best efforts, but a few managed to go away, heading for the top of Wyrmrest.

The first pieces of the Temple began to fall off, Wyrmrest Temple falling to pieces under the sustained assault of my cosmic spell. No more dragons were coming my way, they were instead fleeing. The purple and dark blue ones were making them vanish into thin air. One of them, with a shredded left wing, ran along the ground for a few seconds before vanishing as well. Were those the twilight dragons, showing me their control over this realm they had? Curious.

The Temple was absolutely falling apart by the time the Dragonqueen herself made her appearance. Her ruby form twisted in the air, fighting desperately against the air currents. She craned her neck back to catch my gaze, ember-filled eyes meeting space-black eyes, before she too vanished into thin air.

I sustained the black hole for a few more minutes, Wymrest continuing to crumble with a deafening clamor, like thousands of bones being broken all at once. Slowly at first, but building up, until finally it crumbled to entropy and was swallowed by the event horizon, never to be seen again. I stopped the spell and pulled Gorribal out of the ice, grasping its hilt tightly. I growled in pain as the effects of the spell took hold of my, my body yellow-hot. There was actually a _crack_ in my body, a narrow severing in my right shoulder. I pointed my left index finger at it and fired a narrow jet of flame, telekinetically pushing the metal back together, welding it back into working order. I _had_ to get out of this cold, but not before ensuring victory at Ulduar. That was paramount. Eventually, the pain faded, my color turning back to red, and I examined the destruction I'd wrought. I couldn't help the malevolent smile that graced my features.

The ice of Dragonblight had been carved out, forming a massive chasm before me, almost perfectly smooth due to the roughly uniform effects of gravity. The few clouds that had been in the air were disrupted, forming rings above me. The Path of the Titans was torn and crumpled, barely recognizable anymore. Wyrmrest was almost entirely gone, however a bottom layer still existed. It was a vast chamber, dwarfing even Alexstrasza with its radius, and if I remembered the architecture the Pantheon liked to make when ordering worlds, it would have been a meeting ground for the Aspects, or something along those lines.

I tensed my legs and leaped forward. With a flick of my will gravity's hold on me lessened, allowing me to float into the middle of the chamber easily. It was in utter disrepair, much to my delight, metal fragments and crushed drakes littering the area. The five portals around the area had been untouched.

I walked up towards a green drake, who's rasping breath let me know he still lived. He turned his head towards me, but that was all he could do, buried under rubble as he was. Even though his eyes were closed, he seemed to notice me. "W-wait - "

I shot a shadow bolt at him from my left hand, instantly killing the drake. I went around, killing any survivors left, before levitating the debris off them and moving it away. Then I raised Gorribal to the sky and channeled fel lightning into them, dissolving their flesh and will. That done, I sent the fel-drakes in the direction Ialion had taken his army.

I looked at the five portals. One was a swirling ruby vortex, another azure, then emerald, amber, and lastly amethyst.

I walked towards the ruby one, and pondered. It was curious how the dragons had abandoned their holiest of places without so much as even trying to fight me once I created the black hole. Did they know who I was? Possible, they had long memories. So did they simply recognize it as hopeless, seeing the intense power I held? Good. The more I demoralized them, the better. Still, it was a double-edged sword. On one hand, I could make them think 'We lost Wyrmrest, what hope do we have?'. However, there was also the chance for them to think 'For Wyrmrest!'. Possibly both, varying from member to member. Still, my display of power, however self-destructive in this freezing wasteland, was likely to shift their moral to the former possibility, rather than the latter.

Once inside the portal, the scenery changed. I was outside, standing on a plain of green grass. Red-leaved trees and flowers of all kinds dotted the area. Spiky red eggs were laid in clutches to the sides, with dragonspawn tending to them. The grass around me immediately caught fire.

Ah, now I understood. The Sanctums were secure places to store eggs, among other things. Probably for very important eggs, such as the children of Aspects. If I knew my organic genetics correctly, the children of Aspects would be more powerful than other dragons. Best to put them down quickly. The dragonspawn too.

I charged forward, the nearest group of dragonspawn turning around to see me. I was upon them in a moment, slashing and casting, effortlessly shrugging off their attacks. I tried to raise the dragonspawn, but their skeletons simply turned to dust. I made my way to the middle of the Sanctum and channeled a massive fire nova. The radial blast of flame cut through the eggs smoothly, destroying the whelplings within. They to were unable to be animated. I left the Sanctum in flames, leaving the pocket dimension and turning around. I sliced Gorribal at the portal frame, destroying it.

I repeated the same with the remaining four Sanctums as quickly as I reasonably could. While destroying the portal frames themselves would annihilate the pocket dimensions, and all within them, it would be prudent to see if there was anything within I could use to my advantage.

The Emerald Sanctum was very similar to the Ruby Sanctum. However, there was a green mist hanging in the air, and simply being in the region made a slight sense of drowsiness tug at the back of my mind. It was easily defeated, as were the eggs and dragonspawn, but for lesser invaders it might've been a powerful deterrent. Nothing of value.

The Azure Sanctum was far different from the previous two. The ground was covered in snow, arcane crystals jutting from the ground in the place of trees, crackling with might. They almost instantly began to batter me relentlessly with arcane missiles, forcing me to reach my magic into them and reprogram them to be inert. It let the dragonspawn defenders score a few hits on me, to no effect. Needless to say, embedding them with explosives seeds of corruption made short work of them. Surprisingly enough, there were actual _whelps_ there, not just eggs, along with the bones of animals they must've eaten. Groups of tiny blue things that attacked me with desperate ferocity in a single mass group of a hundred. A few of them tried to bite me with their fangs or slice me with their claws, while others blasted me with arcane missiles and frostbolts. They succeeded in nothing, rewarded with a singe from my red-hot skin when they got too close. I swept Gorribal through the air, rending them to pieces easily with delightful shrieks of pain and agony. In seconds, there was nothing left of them but body parts and blood.

I snapped some of the arcane crystals off and sealed them in the same pocket dimension I kept my jeweled scepter in. I would have taken them all, but at my current strength I could not store enough in an alternate realm. But the ones I had with me would be very useful. Later.

Three down, two to go. The Amber Sanctum was a desert wasteland, much to my delight, with a sky that undulated many different colors. Red, green, black, white, bronze. I growled, the heat of my feet glassing the sand. This realm _stank_ of my brother's power. I took great delight in dismembering the dragonspawn there with my flaming half-a-sword and telekinetically ripping the whelplings to pieces within their own shells. All in all, though, there was nothing useful there besides an _annoying_ slowing defensive mechanism that had little to no hold on me. And I would _never _stoop to using my brother's power.

The last sanctum was covered in dark purple stone. Torches alight with dark blue fire provided the only illumination besides me, my red glow cutting sharply through the gloom. There was no defensive mechanism here, nor did I see anything particularly useful. The dragonspawn I took care of by lifting them into the air with my mind and tossing them so high up that when they fell back down from the black sky, they left indiscreet marks on the stone floor. There were also animal bones, and whelplings that had eaten them. Dark blue fire peppered my shadow-reinforced skin. It was... _strange_ magic. It had the heat of fire, but chilled to the touch. The telltale mark of shadow power, but a little... _different _in a manner I could not put my finger on.

Of course, that didn't stop me. I grabbed them and crushed their throats, released shadow bolt volleys that overwhelmed their -admittedly- impressive shadow resistance with brute force. I stabbed my sword forward, slicing several of them in half with one stroke, dismembering and maiming the others, grounding them without their wings. I left the final Sanctum and shattered it behind me. That was done.

I looked out at Dragonblight from where I stood in the chasm I'd carved with my black hole. There were surely more skeletons for me to raise and send after Ialion, however I couldn't go out of my way to get them all; I had somewhere to _be._ Still, I'd ressurect all that were in my path.

_'Mephistroth, how fares your situation?'_

_'Excellent, my Lord. The signal for bombardments has been sent, and we shall begin the first fel-cannon barrages on the cities in a few minutes.'_

_'Keep me posted.' _I changed the direction of my thoughts. _'Kil'jaeden, what is the situation at Hyjal?'_

_'Escalating rapidly, the guardian night elves here have already staged a failed assault on us. The secondary fortifications are going up as we speak. We will be impenetrable within minutes, thanks in large part to the Twilight's Hammer.'_

_'Good.'_ I changed to Ialion. _'And you?'_

_'We are currently above the open ocean, my Lord. Nothing to report. Shall I inform you the moment we reach land, or when we reach Kil'jaeden?'_

_'The former.' _I changed my thoughts again, this time seeking something much more hidden. A massive, massive body far beneath the earth, almost at the planet's mantle, hidden beneath the Undercity. _'Tsa'thannon, anything you wish to share?'_

_'What's there _to_ share that your minions haven't already?' _I bristled. He'd been listening in. How _dare_ he! _'Well it's in my best interests to know what how my allies are doing. You might want to shield your thoughts, by the way. It doesn't take an Old God to read them as it stands now.'_

_'Noted.' _I raised my left hand to my head and wove the magic, blocking any invasive telepathy. _'Done.'__  
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_'Splendid. Anyhow, there _is_ some bad news. I have been unable to persuade the naga to fight for me. They do not sound keen to fight against us, but we can not count on them; I doubt I shall break them before this war ends. On the other tentacle, things seem to be going well everywhere else. I shall do my best to mentally wear down the dragons.' _Tsa'thannon's voice turned bitter. _'Especially that _traitor._'_

_'Excellent. I hope to see you freed soon, Tsa'thannon.'_

_'And I hope you see you in your true form once more, Sargeras.' _The link went silent, and I turned my way towards the northeast, towards the Storm Peaks. Towards Ulduar.

I had somewhere to be. **  
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><p>Verthelion<p>

"Wyrmrest is... gone?" I asked in surprise. Alexstrasza nodded, sitting in her true form before me. We were sitting outside Grim Batol. Beside her were Kalecgos, Ysera, and Nozdormu as well, each of them fiddling with their claws nervously, save for the Timeless One, who seemed as unfazed as ever.

"Yes, it is," said my queen.

"Define 'gone'," I repeated.

"Obliterated. Absorbed by a tear in reality, so that it now ceases to exist. So many of us died," she said. "We barely got away. From what you've told us, it sounds like Sargeras has arrived upon this world."

I sucked in a breath. "Already? But, there's no signs of any other demonic invasion. He would've needed some sort of portal at first, wouldn't he? Not as big as the Well of Eternity, he's not in his true form, but _still!_"

"Apparently he's found a way," Kalecgos said. Wyrmrest has fallen. And..." He looked down, something glistening in his eye. The other Aspects all dipped their heads in mourning. "And so did the Sanctums."

My heart clenched and twisted painfully in my chest. "The... the broods there. Selriona..."

"She got away, but our clutches are... are lost," Nozdormu said.

"But, couldn't you have brought them with you?" I asked, turning to Alexstrasza.

A pained expression crossed her fangs. "There wasn't time," she said lowly. "By the time we realized just what was happening, it was too late. The tug of that spell was... tremendous. I barely got away myself. I am sorry, Verthelion."

I closed my eyes, my form shifting haphazardly between the physical plane and the twilight realm. After a few moments I got control over myself. "It's started, then. It's started." I let out a deep breath. "Come with me to Grim Batol. We'll armor up and then go... go where?" I couldn't help but shout at myself mentally. _Stupid, stupid, stupid! This is the sort of thing we're supposed to stop from taking place! Now look what's happening! _

Ysera answered me, her shifting eyes shimmering more than usual. "Hyjal is under heavy assault. The Guardians of Hyjal have requested desperate aid, from both us, and the Horde, Alliance, Earthen Ring, just about anyone."

I grounded, rubbing my neck with a wing talon. "Anywhere else that's being attacked?"

"Several of the Alliance and Horde capital cities, so far as we know. The Earthen Ring has also said that the earth and fire elementals are extremely frustrated."

"When was this?" I asked, somewhat annoyed, hiding my sorrow. My brood, lost. All gone... "Why was I not informed right away?"

"_We_ did not call the meeting," Kalecgos said. "Alexstrasza was about to go get you when they found us, and the Liberality Confederacy, and told us of the situation. We had to let them, this is too important to stall. Now you know too."

I groaned. "Alright, well, come on in," I said, turning around. "Let's get our armor on." I took to the air, the other Aspects behind me, and entered Grim Batol. We had to use mortal forms there, else our size would be too much to maneuver safely. As we passed, members of my Flight dropped to their forelegs in respect for the five Aspects passing through. After a few minutes of leading them through corridors that were as convoluted as my thoughts, we found ourselves in what had been dubbed by myself and the dragonspawn who often used it as the Armory.

It was a large chamber, more than large enough for one Aspect at a time. It was divided in three main 'sections'. The raw materials we'd scavenged from Grim Batol when we took it so many centuries ago formed the first section, to our right. Iron, Steel, Adamantine, Elementium, weapons melted down for their raw metal, had all been piled in large groups to the right of the room, covering the pedestals where there had once been dwarven statues. It had been a very unorganized cluster, but now it was empty, the spare metals we had after armor and claw sheathes were taken care of given to the mortals for their military efforts.

The second section was before us; the forge. It used the lava spouts the dwarves had installed in Grim Batol, though I had next to no understanding of how it actually worked. Still, it let us produce all the items in the last section, neatly organized to our left. Hundreds of claw sheathes were lined up in rows, cornucopias of metal with spikes that could dig into our claws to secure them. They were painful to put on and take off, but the holes in our claws healed quickly. Next to them were stacks upon stacks of enormous metal plates, which came in several colors. Almost all our elementium had gone into making them; it was a tough metal by all accounts, surpassing even saronite in its durability and flexibility. It also didn't drive you insane, which was a major plus.

I looked over at the dragonspawn general who ran the forge, who had dropped to his forelegs upon seeing me enter. "Aspects, I am humbled. What brings you to the Armory?"

"It's time, Irolion." Nozdormu cleared his throat lightly. "We need our armor on."

His yellow eyes flickered, the slit pupils turning thinner. "So... it's happening then, is it?"

I frowned. "Yes, it is. Go and find anyone else needed to place our armor on, and bring them here right away. Send the call for Emergency Protocol... what was it... ah yes, BLI-1."

"That bad, Aspect?"

"Sargeras himself walks this world," I said. "I'll fill in the details later, but go!"

He nodded. "Yes, of course." Then he faded into the twilight realm, using its empowering aura to hasten himself.

I sighed, looking at the four other Flight leaders next to me, waiting anxiously. Even Nozdormu looked _slightly_ worried. "And now, we wait. Don't worry, he'll be quick. BLI-1 is the plan for Burning Legion Invasion danger level 1, the highest. No messing around if that's called."

Kalecgos nodded, the arcane light in his eyes flickering on and off haphazardly now and then. Sleep deprivation. What was causing _that?_ "Good, good. When we're done here, I'll go back to the Nexus and have the banishing crystals and banishing weapons moved to Hyjal as well."

Before too long, several dragonspawn and a few drakes arrived, Irolion with them. I turned to Alexstasza. "Would you like to go first, my queen?"

For a moment she hesitated, and I flinched. Residual mistrust? Fear of a trap? But she smiled warmly and nodded. "Yes, thank you," she said, stepping forward. The others before us went to the piles of armor and began to fish out the ones colored a brilliant red, applying them to the Dragonqueen one at a time. They weren't _completely_ like the ones Neltharion had worn. They didn't need to be bolted into our flesh, or applied while they were still red-hot. They were linked together as well, almost like puzzle-pieces, to make tearing them off exceptionally difficult, but still provided incredible protection. The dragonspawn and drakes worked together, applying the armor one at a time to Alexstasza. We weren't idle this time, however. We teleported around, telling our Flights of what was to happen, rotating between who was being armored. I sent messengers through to watcher's whose positions I knew of. I was about to track down Selriona and ask her to tell her mortal friend of the situation when Ysera arrived.

She was covered in green-painted armor horns to tail, barely letting me see even her iridescent eyes. Her tail-club was deadlier now, the armored club having very large, very sharp spikes that far exceeded the natural barbs in lethality. Her claws were sharper, her horns razored. The only parts of her body _not_ armored were her eyes and her wing membranes. The wing _bones_ had been armored, however.

"Verthelion, your forgemaster respectfully asked me to send you for armoring."

I nodded. "Thank you, Ysera. I'll go at once." Our forms began to shimmer and swap. While I expanded to my true form, Ysera's contracted to her mortal form. It had changed. Gone was the flowing green cape, and the mail armor. Gone was her emerald hair and skin. She was now essentially a walking metal-elf, covered from retained horns to toes in green armor, which also made her fingers clawed.

She sighed. "It makes flight... difficult."

I sighed. "Yeah, we'll have to get used to that." I took to the air and headed towards the Armory. Before too long, I was inside.

The drakes and dragonspawn were already preparing my armor. Kalecgos and Nozdormu's color-coded armor still resided off to the side, but the purple plates of mine were already being brought out.

"Alright," I told them. "Let's get this done. We need to hurry."

Slowly, they swarmed over me, fastening armor and tightening plates. They started at my tail, fastening the club-plate, slowly but steadily working their way up my tail, then my stomach, my legs, claws. At several points Irolion asked me to stand, or lower myself to the ground, move a recently armored limb, to aid with getting the armor on and to test the armor already on, tightening where it was needed. They worked their way over my back, up and down my wings. My flanks, my neck, my crest, and finally my head and horns were finished.

"Excellent," Irolion said from before me. I flexed my forelegs, lifting one up and twisting the paw around. It felt strange, unruly. Even breathing in and out took slightly more effort. But I was an Aspect; what was a bit of extra weight? "Can you breathe a little fire?"

I opened my maw, which took an unusual amount of effort. I brought flames into my crop and exhaled a tiny fireball. While it was still in the air I willed its energy to disperse into nothingness.

"Good, good. Everything seems to be working. Shall I send a messenger to the Spellweaver, or will you go yourself?"

"Send a messenger," I said, looking down at him. There was a shadow of black around the edges of my vision, the armor around my eyes close to restricting my vision. They didn't quite obscure my sight, but they came very, very close. A necessary sacrifice. "I will start preparing the rest of our Flight for war."

"Of course, Aspect. Shorliona!"

A dragonspawn appeared next to him. "Yes, Irolion?" she asked, tugging on her cowl.

He wove together some arcane magic and, after a few seconds, opened a portal to the home of the Blue Dragonflight. "Go through and tell the Spellweaver our Aspect says its his turn for armor. Be quick about it!"

She nodded, turning to the portal. "Right away." She went through, and vanished. I also turned around and left the Armory. I had to contract to my mortal form to get through the corridors, however.

Just like Ysera and Neltharion before us, my armor shrunk to fit my mortal form. The helm was a jagged thing of purple elementium, with a single eye-slit. All along my body was metal plating, encasing me entirely. It felt even more awkward than the armor in my true form. How did mortal warriors _wear_ this stuff? It was so... _stiff_ and _flimsy._ This couldn't actually protect us, could it?

_No,_ I told myself. It was made of elementium. I'd tested the metal myself; it held firm against my blasts. Neltharion's elementium armor protected him against the fury of four Aspects. It would work. It had to work. There wasn't another option.

I found Selriona near one of the lower platforms, sitting on her haunches, looking down at the pool of magma below us. Her wings were tight against her back, the shredded one letting me see through the her thick back-scales. Her breathing was heavier than usual.

"Hey," I said, sitting down next to her with a metallic _thump_. "It's time."

She nodded. "I heard." Her claws tightened on the stone, carving gashes. "Our brood, all gone. Our _entire_ brood, only a few days old..."

I squeezed my eyes tightly. "I - I know. Sargeras himself was there. What was it like?"

"It was... horrible. There was a shout that we were under attack. I wasn't in the Sanctum at the moment, I was just returning from a magnataur hunt. But before I could go outside I saw through the door. I didn't even see Sargeras. There was just this... this huge black _void_ in the air, pulling in everything. Even the air, me with it. And the dragons who got pulled too close were just..." She took a deep breath. "They were just torn apart. There wasn't any time to rescue the whelplings! We barely got away as it is, by the time we realized what was going on - "

"You don't have to defend yourself," I said through a tight throat. "Sargeras would've gotten you anyway if you'd taken the extra time."

"Yes, he would've," she hissed. Twilight fire began to illuminate her claws. "I swear on Aman'thul's name I am going to _kill_ him. I'm going to rip that vrykul body to shreds, tear his soul out with my fangs and _kill him!_" Something dripped into the magma below and vaporized. From both of us.

"Don't do anything rash, please. You already make me think you're dead often enough! Don't make it a reality by attacking Sargeras himself."

She nodded, shaking her head and steadying her breathing. "You're right. We need a plan. What is it?"

"We Aspects are armoring up. After that, we're distributing the sheathes. I need to talk to you about your Dragonsworn, our eldest member."

She nodded, looking up at me curiously. "Yes, what about her?"

"She's in..." I wracked my memory. "The Storm Peaks, right?"

"Right...?"

"I need her to check on Ulduar. The Legion is attacking from many places at once, and Sargeras possessed an _iron vrykul. _There are a lot worse things in Ulduar. He might make a move to possess one of those constructs, and then where would we be? Have her check on Ulduar, then come to Hyjal to aid in the defense."

"Right." She grinned. "Anything to screw with the Burning Legion." She closed her eyes, probably communicating. After a few minutes, her grip on the stone relaxing, she opened them again. "Alright, she's on her way. Apparently, her mate's choosing to follow her as well. So, should I go for the claw sheathes?"

I shook my head. "No, not quite yet. Wait until Nozdormu and Kalecgos finish before going. For now, spread the word, help tell anyone still out in the field to return here immediately."

"Of course, Verthelion. BLI-1."

"BLI-1," I repeated gloomily. She got back on her paws and turned around, walking up the ramps and stairs. I looked after her for a moment, watching her tail-club drag along the ground, until she vanished from sight.

I looked down and sighed, a headache rapidly developing. "What are we gonna do?"

_Nothing to do, nothing to live for__, _said a faint voice at the back of my mind. I perked up for a moment, before deflating.

"Oh _no._"_  
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><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<strong>


	39. Chapter 39:Advantage Gone

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Huge thanks to dharak for beta'ing this!**

**Chapter published 3/27/13**

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><p><span>Selriona<span>

My claws felt _ weird._

But that was to be expected, considering they were encased with metal, with barbs driven into them to secure the weapons. My hind legs didn't have the armaments, so as to double the number available for use. A fair portion of each Flight had been weaponized, though few dragonspawn and drakonids were, seeing as how they already used weapons. Even in a mortal form, I retained the claw sheathes, forming sharpened metal gauntlets over my hands that never went away no matter what I tried. Probably for the best not to.

The air was already turning foul. I'd visited Hyjal many times over the centuries; the air was usually crisp, fresh, and magically charged. Now, though, there was a sense of foreboding hanging over the air, the slight glow of the atmosphere was gone. An unnatural smell of ash and heat swept through the mountain, coming from the rapidly-expanded base from far below the mountainside. Normally I'd appreciate the heat, cold blooded as I was, but...

It was... _scary. _Scary how quick they'd developed their base, and even scarier who they were _with_, who let them into our world. My Flight had known of the cultist activities, of course. But we hadn't known they'd be so... so _destructive._ So _rapid._ Opening portals like this to the Burning Legion's homeworld was something that took months and a lot of resources. How in the name of Aman'thul had the cult done it in nearly a dozen places, in two weeks, _without us noticing what their goals were?_

That question was why I was attending the meeting to discuss battle strategy. Of the Dragonflights, every Aspect, their Prime Consort, and General Vajarn (Verthelion and I had both vouched for him as a tactical genius. The other Aspects also remembered him. It _was_ his plan that ended the Cataclysm) attended the meeting underneath the World Tree. Emissaries from the Alliance and Horde were coming as well. The Argent Crusade was already here, as were the Earthen Ring and Cenarion Circle. They were preparing non-stop, and the Earthen Ring had summoned elementals to hurl boulders down the mountainside, tossed by earth elementals and propelled by air ones, to keep the demons and the cultists pinned down.

That in and of itself was a cause for worry and a half. The Burning Legion and the Twilight's Hammer joined together under one banner. An unstoppable engine of destruction with access to the raw materials of countless thousands of worlds, joined by a group of Old God-worshipping zealots who would give their lives in a heartbeat to take down even one of us. And there _was_ one Old God left. We didn't know where; they'd been careful. And even if we did we wouldn't have been able to kill it, either. If we did, Azeroth would be destroyed. With each Old God that died, their parasitic 'link' to Azeroth condensed with the remaining ones. This was the last one. If it died, everyone died. We didn't know exactly how, but the Kingslayers had learned from Ulduar, in no uncertain terms, that if the Old Gods were wiped out the world would end.

They had arrived too, of course. Led by the night elf Turaniles, the Liberality Confederacy was ready and willing. They'd been vigilant for this sort of thing for centuries. They had killed N'zoth, and stopped the Legion Portal to the Searing Gorge. Now, the strongest fighting force in the entire world was here in Hyjal, ready to defend it for a third time.

All around me everyone was preparing. The Cenarion Circle was spreading protective spells on the trees to keep them from catching fire, and readying more aggressive plants to turn their acid and thorns on the imminent invaders. Everyone was getting ready; outposts of the Alliance and Horde, portals spilling their troops in where they began to run through, organizing themselves and preparing for battle; distributing weapons, exercise, so on. I walked through in my true form. I drew the occasional glance, followed by hurriedly looking away. The rest of my kind was also here, sparing among themselves to get ready, flying through the air to stretch their wings, so on.

I looked back at my left wing sadly. It had only been eighty years since I lost my flight. The ground-sickness had faded away after a year, but everytime I saw someone fly I had to hold back a depressed growl, my heart twisting and contorting with envy. You don't know what you have until you lose it...

I was shaken out of my thoughts as I approached Nordrassil, the towering tree extending far above me, dominating Hyjal's Summit. Green moss engulfed a majority of its branches, forming globs of emerald on it. Magic shone inside of the tree, making it glow from the inside out. Its canopy of leaves shimmered, letting only a bare minimum of sunlight through to the gargantuan shadow it cast below. I walked over to the night elf village situated between two of the World Tree's roots, towards the middle where roads branched off from a circle. The others from the Dragonflights were already there, including Vajarn in his true form. Despite his superiors being in his mortal form, it was not disrespectful for him to be in his true form; for one thing, there's little place for formalities when the _world_ is ending, and two, he'd earned a lot of respect during and since the Cataclysm. His flightless wings were twitching anxiously.

The Aspects were all encased head to toe in armor, colored for each Flight. I took my place next to Verthelion, who was in between Vajarn and I, and assumed my mortal form; a human with pale skin, dark circles under my eyes, and black hair that shimmered purple when the light reflected off it just right. My eyes were also violet, like my scales.

However, there was someone I didn't recognize at _all. _He was also a human, with dark skin. He stood fairly short, a head below me. He was garbed in elaborate white and black robes, with a red waistband and a strange, large white and red hat. He had a small black beard, and a red gem in his robes, right under his neck. Oh, and his eyes were _glowing red. _He smelled like a dragon, it was easy to recognize a dragon in mortal form when you're one as well. But what Flight was he?

"My pardon, but who are you?" I asked as politely as I could.

He looked up at me, face expressionless. "My name is Wrathion."

I furrowed my brow. Wrathion, Wrathion. That name _sounded_ like a male from my Flight, but I couldn't smell any twilight essence on him. Only soot, lava and... no. Oh no. "You're a - "

Verthelion stopped me. "He is. He's also uncorrupt, and he's here to aid in the defense of Hyjal however he may."

I narrowed my eyes. "How come we haven't heard of you before?"

He shrugged. "I'm good at keeping myself hidden. During the Cataclysm, the Red Flight - " He shot a scathing look at Alexstrasza, who didn't seem to be offended. " - did a variety of _things._ It ended with my broodmother being dead and me uncorrupted within my shell. My egg was lost, I hatched on my own, and have been keeping myself hidden ever since. Now though, I think it _might_ be useful to have one more dragon on claw for the defense."

I tried to keep my apprehension hidden. After all, the last time I'd seen a member of the Black Flight, so many years ago, before Verthelion was the Aspect, he'd been close to ushering in the Hour of Twilight.

"Uncorrupt, you say?" I shifted partially into the twilight realm. Surprisingly enough, there was no fog around Wrathion to signal taint. I shifted back. "Huh, you aren't tainted. Alright then, I've seen stranger things. When are the mortals arriving?"

"They should be arriving soon," said Tyrygosa, Prime Consort to Kalecgos. She was in her blood elf form, with metallic claws on her hands. "It's not like them to cause delay when our entire _world_ is going to end." She turned to Vajarn, then to the rest of us. "General Vajarn _is_ as good a tactician as you claim, yes?" I bit down annoyance. Mere dragonspawn or not, Vajarn was an old friend of mine from the Cataclysm. He'd proven himself many times over since, analyzing the Records when my first mate wasn't adding to them and organizing them.

Said dragonspawn played with his claws while Verthelion spoke up for him. "General Vajarn's strategy was what lead to Neltharion's reign of madness ending. If there's any dragonspawn who should attend this meeting, it is him."

Tyrygosa didn't look entirely convinced, but didn't press the issue any further.

Before too long, the mortals began arriving. Go'el the Second, named after the first, was an orc of impressive height and build, olive green skin, black hair, and sky-blue eyes that had earned him his name. Currently he was dressed humbly, in little more than brown leather. He greeted us, and fell into his place as leader of the Earthen Ring.

Following him was Oldus, new leader of the Argent Crusade after the previous one passed away from old age. He was a tall draenei, his skin a dark blue, like the bottom of the sea, and he wore the armor of Tirion Fordring, passed down through the ages. It baffled me. Why would you pass down the armor? Sure, blacksmiths could remake it, but it would never be fully repaired. Best to make a new set and melt it down for raw materials. Maybe it was the same reason why I'd held onto my capacitor for all those decades, before the Burning Legion vaporized it during that fateful day...

I snatched my hand away from my neck when the sharp metal on it pricked me.

Malfurion Stormrage joined us, as did a gnome female with bright blue hair, brighter than anything I'd ever seen before, and a suit, complete with tie. The ambassador of the Alliance, Dizzy. Also was a troll, Tol'kon his left tusk half severed. He didn't wear a suit, but did wear elaborate leather garments with metal-spiked shoulderpads. It was apparently the current form of 'class' among the Horde.

The last to join us was Turaniles, guild-master of the Liberality Confederacy. She was a kaldorei, standing tall and proud with her violet-tinted skin and similar hair. She wore no armor, and her crackling, lightning-imbued sword was also absent. She was instead in green clothes, seemingly signifying the World Tree whose shadow we were engulfed in.

Alexstrasza started, her gentle, serenity-inducing voice given a muffled sound through her armor. "Welcome, all of you, to the World Tree. Would that it were under better circumstances." She hesitated a moment, her glowing red eyes flicking across the assembled people. "As I'm sure you are all aware, we have gathered to defend the heart of all life on our world from the combined forces of the Burning Legion and the Twilight's Hammer. Go'el, you mentioned prior that you have gathered some information about their activities?"

He nodded grimly. "Indeed I have, Dragonqueen. We have sent scouts through the earth towards their camp. The situation is... worse than expected. The ground is already charred and blackened, tortured beneath the Legion's machines. Their technology has increased a hundred-fold from last time, which is why they have dug in so quickly mere days after their appearance."

Nozdormu nodded. "And their defenses? Their army?"

"Heavily entrenched fel-cannons brimming with their fire. Black and green metal spires that appear to be designed to release an aura of demonic power. In the middle are four similar towers, but with green crystals atop them, channeling sickly emerald lighting into a red pool of magic. In that pool..."

He took a deep breath and released it. "Kil'jaeden. He appears to have tried to come to our world, but was unable to entirely. It won't be long before he emerges fully from his portal."

Verthelion growled. "Kil'jaeden..." I knew what he meant. Ever since battling him while coming to rescue me, Verthelion hadn't been able to let it go. He was very confident he could beat the demon lord, and why couldn't he? Last time it was an even battle, but the Deceiver had had an _army_ on his side and Verthelion couldn't reach into the twilight realm for strength. Now, he'd have full access to our realm, could pull him in to isolate him from his army. Verthelion wore thick armor, and had been sparring with the other Aspects every month for the past eight decades. He was ready - no, he was _itching _for round two.

Go'el the Second nodded. "Indeed. There are also four lesser portals surrounding him, from which pour a seemingly endless stream of demons and faceless. Thousands of them, with more coming as we speak. Their base is unbelievable heavily fortified, and they have already started their march up the mountain. The Grove of Malorne has fallen, and the Grove of Aessina is next."

Kalecgos nodded. "I have already positioned many of my Flight's magical defenses there. Arcane crystals and banishing crystals. They will be very efficient at eliminating them."

"Me and my sister have also blessed the trees there. They shall not catch fire as they did last time, nor shall they be chopped down." said the Awakened Dreamer. "But back to the subject at hand. Is there anything else of their defenses we should know?"

Go'el spent the next few minutes outlining the more precise details of the Legion and Hammer's defenses. Corrupted elementals leading, since they could always be summoned back. Ascendancy Circles, where cultists were going up to be turned into the fearsome, enigmatic ascendants. The places where their fel-cannons were arranged to 'pinch' incoming armies, or were guarding a shadow-field emitter. Each of us spoke for those, coming up with plans on how to perhaps counter them, and how they may be changed in the future. I noticed that Vajarn had the most successful ideas out of us all.

"Here's something I wish to know," said dragonspawn said once that was done. "What are the _leaders_ of the armies in Hyjal? Go'el, you have mentioned the Deceiver but are there any others?"

The orc shrugged. "Yes. The eredar lord appears to be heading the demonic invasion by himself, but the actual cult has two leaders. A dwarf man who goes by, from what little we could hear, 'Kroton Quakeg' - "

I nodded. "Ah yes, I've heard of him," I said to myself in Draconic.

" - and this strange tauren woman. Even through the earth, my scouts report her blazing with the soul of a fire elemental. No word on her name."

Hmm, that description seemed so _familiar. _I had no inkling as to the name, but I _clearly _remembered Amanthe talking to me about that a few centuries ago. Their _name_, though, I'd lost it entirely. I wouldn't know it if I saw it. I'd have to ask Amanthe if she knew anything after the meeting; right now, this required my full attention.

General Vajarn considered this for a moment. "We should assassinate them. Our Flight can infiltrate their camp through the twilight realm, kill them, and then escape in an instant. We must destabilize their power structure. Furthermore, have you noticed a pattern about our enemies? They have no _air_ power. What is there to stop us dragons from simply flying down to their camp with the Aspects and wiping them out?"

Silence. Then, the ambassador to the Alliance spoke up. "That's... actually not that bad of an idea. Five Aspects, plus all the dragons and drakes, and the airships of ours arriving, yeah. Why not?"

_'You are useless. Worthless.'_ Verthelion, Vajarn and I all jumped at the voice.

"Anyone else hear that?" I asked.

"I heard it," my mate confirmed.

"Heard what?" Nozdormu asked.

I frowned. "None of you heard that voice?" My eyes widened in horrible realization. "That means - oh no."

_'You weren't always like this.'_

I hissed at the Old God mentally. _'Damn right I wasn't. I'm better than I was back _then._ Don't try to say otherwise.'_

"I do believe that the Old God the cult worships is _whispering_ to our Flight," General Vajarn said. He then frowned. "Well, that's a complication."

_'You were useful, once. You could be again.'_

_'SHUT UP!' _I shouted at it.

I turned to the others. "It's trying to make us betray you. To ally with it." I sighed. "We won't betray you, but there are a _lot_ of different personalities in our Flight. Bound to be _someone_ who's going to listen to it."

Malfurion groaned, placing his head in his palm for a moment before taking it out. "Well, that would just be perfect. Your Flight once again trying to destroy the World." I winced as he said 'once again'.

"_We_ can resist it," Verthelion said. "We know for a fact there's no Old God beneath Hyjal, which means it must be using much of its power to reach us. It won't be able to do much, probably only talk to a few of us at a time. We've heard them before, we can fight them off."

"You are certain?" Ysera asked nervously.

He nodded. "Positive. I'll be sure to keep you up to date with whatever it says, ignore it, tell the rest of my Flight to ignore it if they hear it." Another whisper. "Like now, it's saying that you've made us useless, that we could be worth something again."

Uneasy nods were had by all.

"I am curious, though," I asked. "Not to change the subject, but why have the Alliance and Horde given so little in terms of aid? Barely half of your armies, and only _one_ airship each out of your entire fleets."

Dizzy was about to open her mouth, but Tol'kon politely placed his hand over her mouth, speaking with nearly no trollish accent. "Their King and our Warchief are in the same boat, so to speak. Not only is Hyjal under siege, but many of our cities are as well. The Legion has established bases outside, and while they aren't invading, they siege us with fel-cannon bombardments, and fire actually rains from the skies, where we have no defense. We can't even find what's _making_ that. They're keeping the army in each city under siege there."

"What?!" Vonrastrasz exclaimed. "The very heart of our world is under assault! If it falls, the blessings of the Aspects will fall! Namely Verthelion's blessing, which is the only thing keeping the remaining Old God from escaping his shackles and killing us all himself!"

He held up his hands. "I'm not saying I _agree_ with them. Would you like us to tell them?"

"Yes," Nozdormu said. "It is of utmost importance every able bodied being defends Hyjal."

_'Selriona, we've got a BIG problem!'_

I froze, reaching into my link. _'Can it wait? I'm discussing battle tactics right now.'_

Dizzy nodded. "Of course, Aspect. I'll take it up with the King as soon as possible."

_'Well, not really, because Ulduar is being torn apart! The Legion's parked right outside of it and, damn it I've never seen so many demons in my life! Not even on Argus. It look like they're being held back, but I don't know for how long.'_

_'Alright, I'll tell them now.__'_ I spoke up. "We've got a situation. My Dragonsworn just informed me of a crucial development." How I loathed referring to Amanthe as 'my Dragonsworn', as if that was all she was. "The Burning Legion is invading Ulduar. They want something from there, and..." Something occurred to me. "Oh, oh no."

"What is it, Selriona?" asked Ikranikus, Ysera's prime.

"Sargeras. I remember seeing his taint traveling in the twilight realm. He was going northeast. He's going _to_ Ulduar. When he gets there, they won't stand a chance!"

"We can't leave Hyjal undefended, though," my mate said. "Not even to go after Sargeras. We'll be swarmed, and it doesn't matter if we beat Sargeras, because we literally _can not_ kill a freed Old God."

"But we can not simply allow the Dark Titan to reach Ulduar and claim its technologies either," Alexstrasza said. "Something must be done to stop him."

"He'll be going through the Storm Peaks," Vajarn pointed out. "From your description, my queen, he appears to be very hot. The clash of temperatures will slow him down and weaken him severely, especially as he closes in on the Titan city. We should split our forces."

Turaniles stepped forward. "With your permission, Aspects, I will lead my guild to Sargeras and kill him." I grinned at the idea. Kill the _bastard_ who murdered my children...

"Are you certain?" Kalecgos asked. "This is Sargeras. Weakened as he is, he managed to destroy Wyrmrest itself in mere minutes."

She waved the point off. "Spells like that take a lot of focus to maintain. Interrupt the focus, interrupt the spell. After that, Sargeras will have a lot of power, but we can outmaneuver him. He's only been in a body for the past eighty years, after centuries without one, _and_ it's not one he's used to. He'll be clumsy, he'll be rusty, and if he channels too much magic, he'll heat u. If what General Vajarn has to say is correct, that'll _punish _him."

"Should you not wish our aid?" Nozdormu asked, sounding genuinely surprised. "Such a being needs a lot of assistance."

She shook her head. "No. Either we'll defeat him, or he'll easily defeat us and your presence will make little difference, save for getting you all killed. We can still fail, but if we fail, that way at least you will not die with us." I stared at her in surprise. She was being _very_ casual about going to kill a Titan.

"At least take our blessings," Verthelion said. "If you insist we not come with you in person, we shall come with you in spirit." He looked at me, and I understood what he wanted. I sighed, and nodded.

"I'll have Amanthe try to find you. She can use the twilight realm very well. At the very least, if things go south, she can pull you out of the fight."

Rumblings of 'good idea' filled the air while I opened the link. _'I need to ask you a favor.'_

_'Sure, what?'_

_'Sargeras is heading to Ulduar, and the Liberality Confederacy plans to intercept and kill him.'_

_'I don't like where this is going.'_

_'Yeah, neither do I. War sucks. Don't worry, I'm not asking you to fight him. Watch from a safe distance, and if things go south pull them into the twilight realm and _run._'_

_'I'll stay safe. Better not to get into the fight at all, probably just get in their way. Okay, got it.'_

_'Thanks so much, Amanthe.'_

_'Hey, no problem, you big sack of scales. Least I can do. Where are they going to be?'_

"Where do you plan to fight him?" I asked.

She pondered this for a moment, but Vajarn beat her to it. "The Temple of Storms, next to the Engine of the Makers. He will most likely pass by on it on his trajectory, and that is the ideal place to combat him. It is cold, so will debilitate him, and is a wide open area. No doubt Sargeras will have an arsenal of area of effect spells, and being able to spread out will negate much of their use."

She nodded. "Excellent idea. I shall return to the rest of my guild on this meeting's conclusion for their input. If it goes well, we'll return here for your blessings, and then be off to the Storm Peaks."

_'Well?'_ she asked impatiently.

_'Temple of Storms, Engine of the Makers,' _I curtly replied.

_'Alright, en route now.' _A pause. _'Stay safe up there, Selriona. I swear to the Titans if you die I will kill you.'_

_'Ditto,__'_ I responded. The meeting wrapped up quickly. The Aspects decided that Vajarn was right. The enemy had no air force, and if they _did_ have one, then it wasn't here and they should take advantage of that while they still could. I was delegated to helping the Argent Crusade, considering I was a grounded dragon who couldn't go with the others, flying and soaring through the air, raining down destruction on those who wanted to scour all life, those who served the ones who had tricked me for so much of my early life - !_  
><em>

I caught hold of myself.

The meeting ended, and we dispersed. I caught Verthelion as he was headed south, in our true forms, getting ready to fly down and assault the enemy base.

We both sat on our haunches. I leaned against him, draping my left wing partially around his armored back. It was a little uncomfortable, with how hard and cold his body was, but I ignored it.

"Careful down there," I told him. "It's _my_ job to always almost get myself killed."

He scoffed, the sound metallic. "Don't remind me. Just... don't linger in the physical realm if things start to go poorly for you, alright? You're a big target on the ground."

I nuzzled against his plated flank. "Don't worry about me, I'll be fine."

He leaned down his head, rubbing his plated snout against my crest. "Alright, alright. You _better_ still be alive when I get back." He softened, both of us purring. "Thanks for the concern. Can't help but feel I'll need it."

I nodded, pulling away from him. "Well? What are you waiting for?" I slapped his back with my shredded wing, and instantly regretted it as the impact traveled up the bone and into my shoulders. "Your rematch with Kil'jaeden can't start if you're not there, can it?"

He smiled. "No, no it can not." He sat up from his haunches and walked a little distance away from me. He flapped a few times, his wings creating metallic _shwings_ through the air, before taking off. He turned into a spot on the horizon, going with the other Aspects to give their blessing to the Liberality Confederacy, and then departing to rally the rest of our Flight and lay ruin to the armies.

I sighed, walking along the path towards the Grove of Aessina, where I could lend assistance. As I got closer and closer, there were more and more soldiers there. The Grove of Aessina, spirit and essence of deep forests and 'heart of the web of life', was filled with night elf architecture though it was clearly militarized. Blue crystals as tall as I sprouted from the ground in the forest, in the camp. I inspected them; they were charged with arcane energy and incredible command lines. The work of the Blue Flight. Cannons had been erected, siege tanks, regiments of mortals and dragonspawn - I saw General Vajarn leading his reconstructed unit - taking places. We were digging in, _hard._

I spoke with the commander in charge about where I could be of most assistance, and after some minutes of debate, I went towards the raised hills, hid behind a mountain, and waited. After what felt like hours, throngs of faceless and demons began charging through the forest, several minutes after a and I may not be able to fly, but I can still get the height advantage.

"Hello," said someone next to me.

I spun over, claws clicking along the ground. My eyes widened, tusks unsheathing, but when I realized who it was I calmed down. She was startled, rearing back on her hind legs in shock. "Turliona, you scared me!"

"Sorry," the dragonspawn apologized, landing again. "General Vajarn said my throwing skills would do most good up here next to you." She touched the dagger she held in one hand, the hilt purple with an indigo streak going through the middle of the blade.

I nodded. "Alright. Go nuts."

She tilted her head to the side. "Go... nuts?"

I waved it off with a wing. "Mortal saying, don't worry." I looked back over to the enemy army. Arcane bolts from the crystals, cannons, and arrows were already flying into their roaring, screaming ranks. They seemed thinned, and a few of them had arrows sticking out of their bodies, likely from night elves hidden in the forest within. I noticed there weren't that many at all, even with them being killed in the woods to reach the Grove. Probably a preliminary attack. "They'll notice us eventually. I'l get us to safety when they do. Hmm, on second thought, better not do anything yet. They've got it handled."

Sure enough, the invaders all died. Each time one of the demons died, a shimmering white strand flew out of them. Be it imp, felguard, succubus, or dreadlord, their souls flew out and were absorbed by a rapidly opened and closed black portal near the Blue Flight's defenses. Banished for all eternity. Within mere minutes, they were all gone.

I sighed. "This is only the beginning. Let's hope the other cause enough damage during the air invasion."

* * *

><p><span>Verthelion<span>

Vajarn was right.

The Legion was defenseless against us.

With five Aspects, along with thousands of drakes and dragons, all flying above and raining down hells, they were unable to defend us. Dark blue, amber, emerald, azure, and ruby wings blotted out the sun as we swirled above them. Their fel-cannons couldn't point so far up, and it was trivial for Kalecgos and I to combine our power and disable their shadow-aura generators. It was quite amusing. After all these years, after being so cautious around our world, the Burning Legion hadn't prepared for _us. _The few demons with wings that could fly to our level, such as dreadlords, terroguards, and the like, were obliterated before they could do any harm.

We'd divided up into several systems. Ysera and her Flight flew around, raining down globs of toxic poison from high up to cut off any escape the Legion may have, coating the ground with green fluid. The Blue and Red Dragonflights laid down strafing runs, encasing demons in ice, or burning them to death in purifying flame. Nozdormu's Flight flew around, slowing down demons as they saw fit so that others could nail them with better accuracy, while mine drew demons by the dozens in the Twilight Realm. We'd all agitated the twilight realm, and now the crippling aura emanating from us rendered the demons ash in moments once they were pulled in. Wrathion had gone on his own, spraying cult and demon infrastructure with searing magma, melting their cannons and armories to cripple their war efforts while we dealt with the army.

"After him!" I shouted, it being very clear who 'him' was. The other Aspects flew with me towards the core of the Legion/Cultist camp, being in the core of the swirling cloud of dragons.

The camp itself was arranged with three spokes. One led up the mountain, burned foliage lining the road. Another led back towards Winterspring, and yet another went directly south to Ashenvale. The camp itself was filled with machinations. Spires of twisted, spiked black and green metal, pulsing purple growths on the ground, rows upon rows of faceless and demons, vents spraying orange fog into the sky. In the heart was a flickering red portal, with eredar summoners channeling their magic into it to raise Kil'jaeden out. Currently he was up to his waist, and looked up just in time to see all five of us Aspects descending after him.

"Grah!" he shouted, calling forth a burst of magic that deflected us, our claws barely avoiding him. I was the first to swerve around, channeling a stream of twilight magic at him from my maw. It collided with his own soul-flaying magic, the two beams reaching equillibrium. Of course, that give the others the perfect opening to bombard him with breath attacks. He stopped holding me off directly and raised his hands, cocooning himself with his wings and forming a barrier of shadow magic around him. It bent and contorted as we sustained our assault, cracks like glass forming in it...

_'Your loved ones will die.'_ I gave a startled flap, giving up my assault, whirling my head around to see who it was. The others kept up their assaults. Through a mouth filled with blazing fire, Alexstrasza spoke to me.

"Verthelion, what is the matter?"

I shook my head. Right. "Old God, startled me!" I opened my maw and released a rain of dark flame onto Kil'jaeden, who looked at his wit's end holding us off; arms shaking, glowing eyes flickering.

Suddenly, there was a screech. It _sounded_ like a dragon, but at the same time it was different. Rasping, echoing, _hollow._

All hells broke loose.

An army of dragons assaulted us, coming from seemingly nowhere. Hundreds died in those first few seconds as they dropped down from above us, sinking bony claws and fangs into us, bony claws clashing with metal-encased claws. One landed on Alexstrasza's back, clawing at the thick armor, so I pulled it into the twilight realm, where my Flight's combined aura destroyed it in moments.

They were bony. Literally, since they were _all_ bones. The skeletons of dragons and drakes, come to life, animated by an eerie green light. They flew around, lashing at us. Undead dragons. They were undead dragons. It was then that I understood with horror that the Burning Legion _had_ prepared for us.

"Fall back! Higher!" I shouted. I looked down at Kil'jaeden, snarling. _Another time._

I released my magic into the air around me as all of us flew higher and higher, passing the message on that we were _leaving_. I pulled as many of the... fel wyrms into the twilight realm as I could, but I was growing sluggish. They weren't just glowing with green light, they were giving off fel mist, and as I breathed it in I could feel it poisoning me, eroding my will and making me question myself. Why _was_ I defending Hyjal? The Legion would clearly win anyway. We had no chance. Better to help them and speed it up -_  
><em>

I shook myself out of it. That mist. It was mind control mist. And since there were so many of them... we _had_ to get away.

"Don't breathe that stuff in!" I shouted in the physical realm, while in the twilight realm raking my armored paws through a platoon of skeletal drakes.

Everything was chaos. Our formations had dissolved, drakes and dragons chasing each other through the air, some being pursued by demonic dragons, hoping to buy themselves time before someone else could save them, blasting any on their way. Blood flew through the air. Bones shattered into dust. The other Aspects lit up the sky with their brilliant magic as I drew them into their dooms dozens at a time, but there were so _many._ It was as if every dragon who ever lived had come back to attack us.

_Dragonblight. Sargeras was in Dragonblight. He made these._

I coughed again, rising above the fel wyrms and their fumes. I brought fire rolling into my crop and wove my magic around it, before spitting it out as a dozen twilight missiles, which each locked onto a separate fel drake, chased them, and re-killed them. How... how _dare_ Sargeras do such a thing! How _dare_ he defile the dead like this!

Soon, all five of our Flights were in full retreat. So many people died in the ambush. I saw dragons die, their blood spraying through the air as they fell. Their throats gouged out, or worse. Some of the fel wyrms, the seemingly more powerful ones, had a habit of breathing their fog onto others. The effects were almost instant as they turned on their allies, until they could be either freed from the magic or put out of their misery. Quickly, though, we managed to get out of the safe zone, coughing on the fel mist and trying to force the images of serving the Legion out of our minds. Alexstrasza, Kalecgos, Nozdormu, Ysera and I held our ground to allow the rest of our Flights to retreat back up Hyjal to Nordrassil. The fog of the fel wyrms was starting to get to me, but I noticed they weren't exactly following us either, instead breaking off and flying back to the Legion and Cult's now devastated camp.

Except for one.

A fel wyrm flew at us on his own. It had flickers of twilight lightning in its rib cage - one of _my Flight! - _and something black in the bone of one of its forelegs. I couldn't help but chuckle at its arrogance. It, on its own, against five Aspects?

I opened my maw and spat out a fireball at the dragon, but it simply spun in mid air, the fireball flying past it. Attacks from my allies also flew out of it, but then with a blur of movement, it was _right_ _next to me._

I didn't have time to do anything before it brought what was left of its tail club up and slammed it into my armored stomach. I gasped as a titanic force threw me back, spinning through the air, forcing the wind out of my lungs. When I got my focus back, I noticed something very, very wrong.

This one fel wyrm was _holding off_ five Aspects, whereas Kil'jaeden could barely hold me off on his own.

I growled, grasping it insides with my magic and _tugging_, pulling out its light in thick white strands, absorbing it, pulling the fel wyrm into my realm. It chuckled when it was alone with me, as if it had been waiting for that.

Faster than I could even blink it was on my throat, snarling and biting, trying to get through the armor. To my horror I could hear the elementium _groaning. _I reached up my colossal paws and bat the skeletal dragon away, unleashing a barrage of twilight lightning at it. It simply reared up in mid air, wings spread out, and absorbed the dark blue lightning. Then it phased back into the physical realm, with me hot on its tail, where it unleashed the blast of twilight lightning at Alexstrasza with a decidedly male roar.

My queen roared in pain as the dark energy burned her, ignoring her armor and burning her scales directly. Thank the Titans that wasn't fire, otherwise it would stick to her...

Kalecgos tackled the fel wyrm, grabbing the dragon half his size with his forelegs, and slammed him into the mountainside, leaving a ring of icicles where he did. The wyrm gave out roar of pain, which we capitalized on, unleashing a barrage of attacks, except for me; if I hit Kalecgos, it could be devastating.

Except the animated skeleton wasn't there. He phased back into the twilight realm, seemingly ignoring the aura of decay I'd activated within. He moved around, too quickly for me to get my claws on him, and reemerged into the physical realm a short ways from us. He took a deep breath, green light pooling in his throat, but then paused, snarled, growled, snarled again in our direction.

He tossed his head. "_Fine! _Have it your way!" Then he flew off, faster than any of us could possibly hope to. Nozdormu extended a golden ray of slowing magic after the fleeing fel wyrm, who, judging by his power, had to be the leader of the others - that was, after all, how the Legion's power structure went. The wyrm twisted out of the way, and flew back into the throngs of fel dragons darkening the skies above the Legion camp.

I took several gulps of air, still winded after the single massive attack I'd taken. "That makes things... a bit more complicated."

Ysera nodded, her shimmering eyes flickering intensely with agitation. "Indeed it does. We should get back to the World Tree. The Legion... has an air force. They rivaled our own, but their numbers are smaller."

"Hardly makes a difference," Kalecgos said glumly. "Each one of us that falls, they can bring back against us. Not to mention that fog of theirs controls minds, and that _one_ fel wyrm could easily hold of us all..."

"But then why'd he leave?" Nozdormu asked, sounding genuinely confused, as if the timeline had been messed with.

Alexstrasza shrugged her wings. "Likely called back by Kil'jaeden. Enough for now. There is a place to discuss this, and it is not here. For now, let us return to Nordrassil, tend to the wounded, and mourn the fallen."

_'You will be doing a lot more of the latter than the former,__'_ the Old God assured me.

* * *

><p><strong>Please review, let me know what you think! I don't bite :-)<strong>


	40. Chapter 40:Wipe Out

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Thanks to dharak for being my beta.**

**Chapter published 4/8/13**

* * *

><p>Ellemayne<p>

Three days after the meeting with the Aspects, we were still waiting for Sargeras.

We'd set up camp in the Storm Peaks, next to the colossal tunnel in the ground known as the Engine of the Makers. I hadn't been down there, but I'd heard Kolkna - oh, how long it's been! - went down there with Brann Bronzebeard during the Northrend Campaign. It was unchanged from the last time I'd seen it; a cylinder in the ground filled with complex titan machinery encased in icicles. Our 'camp' was actually barely a camp at all. Some earth homes conjured by our shamans to give shelter against the biting winds and frigid cold, with food and water conjured by our mages.

We also had Amanthe with us, our backup plan in case the battle with Sargeras turned south. She'd pull us into the twilight realm, and we'd run as fast as possible. However, we'd all agreed that she was not to take part in the fight itself, lest she get in the way. She was an unknown variable, while we were a finely tuned machine. As much as the analogy of machinery didn't sit well with me, it fit. We communicated with each other without words. When someone moved away from a spot on the ground, we knew how to react. Group up, split up, circle around, help them, stop that spell. It was not our power that made us the greatest fighting force on the face of Azeroth. While an individual of our guild was formidable, we were far surpassed by people such as Go'el the Second, or any of the Aspects. No, it was our teamwork, our coordination, that made us who we were. It was because of that that we were unstoppable.

Our camp was abuzz with activity. Ever since Mariel, our warlock leader, had detected the presence of Sargeras fast approaching, we were running through our drills feverishly. Turaniles, the guild leader and head of our warriors, was busy organizing us into formation. Our main idea was that Sargeras would have many area of effect spells, but also ones with splash effects. So we were grouped up into five groups of five. We would be arranged around him like a box. The organizations were so that his area of effect spells could be healed by our healers' own area of effect spells, but not grouped up so much that his splash attacks would devastate us. There were no brave speeches, no last minute motivations. That time was better spent making sure everyone was ready, had healthstones, potions, enchantments, so on.

Fluffy keened by my side, and I knelt to the gray-furred mountain lion, scratching his head. "I know boy, I know. It's okay." My heart warmed at the sight. Poor Fluffy, he must be so scared. I wouldn't let Sargeras kill him. I'd rather _die_ than have my poor cat fall.

I looked to my side, down my enchanted armor, to my bow. Thori'dal, the Stars' Fury, glimmered with rainbow colors along it. As did my armor. And my skin. And everyone else's. The blessings of the Aspects.

The essence of the Red Flight burned beneath my skin, making me glow red from the inside out, warming me and shielding from the biting cold, while also restoring my energy at unimaginable rates and protecting me from flame. I'd only experienced Alexstrasza's Blessing two times before, and neither of the times had been directly from her. This feeling... it was indescribable.

And that was only _one_ Aspect's blessing. The Green Flight's essence shimmered above my skin in tones of green mist, increasing my vitality and reception to healing magic, while also healing me greatly in and of itself. I'd shown myself this by taking a shard of ice from the Storm Peaks and cutting my arm. The wound had healed in seconds.

Nozdormu's blessing sparkled around me like fireflies, seeming to supercharge my muscles and mind, giving me alacrity and speed of both movement and mind, letting me use my spells more often than normally by reducing their 'cooldown', the time during which the magical lines would interfere with the remnants of the previous spell and dissipate.

The essence of the Blue Flight made my purple skin more indigo. Like with Alexstrasza's, Kalecgos's blessing made energy surge from within me, tiny amounts of the nearest ley line diverted into me. This was just a fraction of the nearest magical line, and he could control them all! Imagine the power! Imagine the strength! To add to that, the ley line magic helped our casters with their spells, letting them cast faster than ever before.

And lastly, the gently chilling essence of the Twilight Dragonflight. It manifested as purple shimmers a centimeter from my skin, making weapons sharper, spells burn brighter, and arrows fly faster, while absorbing the darkness around it, shielding me from shadow spells. It was chilling to the touch, but I couldn't deny it would help greatly against someone like the Dark Titan.

And each of us shimmered with the blessings. Even Fluffy.

I blinked my green eyes and stroked my similarly-colored hair. Every muscle in my body tingled. I stood back up after calming down Fluffy, and prepared, looking to the south where Sargeras was supposed to arrive. I glanced behind me to the north, just in time to see coat-covered Amanthe, and her husband whose name I hadn't caught, vanish into the twilight realm.

Back south, the nearest mountain trembled. The skies darkened, reddened. A sensation of almost palpable evil descended over me. Thicker than the Lich King's, more pervasive than Yogg-saron and C'thun's, more chaotic than Deathwing's. It clung to the rocks, to the snow, to our weapons, devouring all light and heat, even as the approaching presence warmed up the air. Over the horizon, a tiny figure, gleaming red, soared up and then landed, planting a sword into the snow and getting on one knee. It blazed intensely, yet even from so far, the figure of an iron vrykul was clear. We all locked eyes with him, and him with us.

Sargeras had arrived.

He could have gone around us. He could have avoided us entirely, and we wouldn't be able to do a damn thing about it. However, the Dark Titan sprinted towards us full speed. I could hear everyone around me taking deep breaths, readying their weapons. I too lifted Thori'dal, an arrow forming out of nothing, and took deep, relaxing breaths to steady my nerves as Sargeras cleared ground towards us at an alarming rate. As he grew closer, I could feel a tug on my being. It was as if my soul was being drawn into a gaping void, siphoning my energy almost too fast for the Aspects' blessings to replenish. I didn't want to think about how it would've been without their power. Sargeras charged at us, going for the melee group. Alex, our lead death knight, taunted Sargeras by brandishing his weapon, making the Lord of the Burning Legion bee-line for him.

I could _see_ his knees buckle under Sargeras's sword. Even broken in half as his sword was, it was sized for a vrykul, which meant it was still as tall as any of us. The fires of Sargeras's sword hissed as they contacted Alex's icy runeblade. They held that position for an eternal instant, then broke apart into a flurry of strikes, so fast I could barely follow them. But Alex was _definitely _on the defensive.

After waiting exactly three seconds, we unleashed our assault. Fluffy charged at Sargeras with the other pets. None of our warlocks were fool enough to summon their minions for this fight, thank Elune. A hail of unerringly accurate arrows, bullets, and magic blasts rained onto Sargeras, peppering what seemed to be a shadow 'skin' around his red-hot form. They hardly slowed him down at all as he continued to strike against Alex with deceptive swiftness for something of his size. Our melee attackers had formed up their position and began to strike at his shielding with their weapons.

Sargeras didn't stick to melee for long. His hands glowed with shadow, and I felt something crushing me. A shadow aura surrounding my body, terrible agony ripping at my soul, growing stronger and stronger. A quick glance around confirmed the same curse on four others. Healing spells began to wash over me, easily keeping up with the tearing pain, especially with Ysera's regenerative blessing. However, Sargeras cast the spell again and again at regular intervals, so before long not a member of our guild was unafflicted by the rising agony. I could feel the pain rising to a crescendo. It ended with a massive burst of pain that sent me to my knees, an explosion of shadow magic washing outwards from me, dampened by the essence of the Twilight Flight but still _horrible. _A moment later, as I picked myself up, Sargeras cursed me with agony again.

I didn't let that deter me, and took aim. A moment later I leaped to the side as a fireball crashed into the spot I had been a moment before, diluted heat washing over my body and a shockwave blowing my hair. More fireballs rained around the battlefield, forcing us to stay mobile. With the environmental hazard, Alex, still locked in melee with Sargeras, was struck several times, each blow seeming to shatter him before our healers restored him. I could see our healers straining, casting heal after heal to keep up with Sargeras's rampant cursing of us. He stopped striking at Alex for a moment and lifted Gorribal into the air, the fires around it growing stronger for a second.

Then a nova of fire exploded outwards, roasting me through Alexstrasza's blessing. I saw the mage beside me fall limp. My heart twisted in my chest. No, Mercio, _no._

"Ignorant mortal," came his uncaring, terrifyingly resonant voice. We continued the assault, raining down attacks that seemed to have no effect. But we knew the truth. His barrier couldn't hold up forever. He parried a strike from Alex and clenched the fist on his left hand, lifting the death knight into the air. With a flick of his wrist, Alex went flying back, slamming into the nearest mountain. Sargeras whirled around, and set his sites on the group of casters across from my group. With a blur of red that I realized was simply him _running,_ he was there, running Aruen through. He lifted the struggling draenei up, then swung his sword to the side, sending the body flying and smashing into the ice, leaving a brilliant streak of red. He released another volley of curses, and another fire nova, before changing his target.

Right to me.

My heart froze in my chest as Sargeras leaped impossibly high into the air, flaming sword raised above his head, fireballs raining around him. He descended at me, and I knew what to do. I gathered all my strength and leaped backward as hard as I could, disengaging from the area, mere instants before the Titan impacted my former location with the force of a hundred cannonballs. The snow cracked and heaved, a ripple expanding outwards and sending the rest of my group flying through the air. Sargeras kept his sword in the ground for a moment as I shot him in the head with an arcane-imbued arrow, and when he took it out flames grew along the snow, devouring magical fuel as they spread in four directions from the epicenter of his smash, like an X.

Purple ropes grew around Sargeras's waist, and tugged him a meter backwards. He growled and turned around just in time to block a strike from the recovered Alex, who he engaged once again in a melee.

I blinked hard, pushing past the agony in my body and soul as Sargeras resumed his merciless magical attacks.

"I thought I killed you," Sargeras growled at Alex. The human didn't respond, instead blasting him with an icy plague, just one of our hundreds of attacks.

The battle continued, us retaking our positions, but our healers, even with the blessings of the Aspects, simply _could not_ keep up with his power. Every fire nova, one of us fell. Each time, he grew closer to victory. Sargeras swung his sword in a wide, circular arc, trailing fire. It sliced Shalond in half, the warglaives of Azzinoth falling from her lifeless hands.

He scoffed at the display. "It was weakling such as _you_ that vanquished Kil'jaeden?"

That set me off, and apparently everyone else. Rage filled me. I started to thirst for combat. Fire burned in my heart and spread through my veins as an indescribable, all-consuming bloodlust took over me, my hands and arms moving automatically, firing arrows with greater and greater speed, crimson light shining around my fingers. Our hail of attacks redoubled, the pain from Sargeras's magic faded and vanished as our healers recovered their footing. The Dark Titan looked at another group and extended his left hand. A web of shadows flew at them, like a fishing net, and wrapped around them for a few seconds. Then he tossed his arm to the side, sending them flying into the fire trail he'd left, but the moment they arrived its magic ran out and the fire vanished.

Magic flew through the air for an indeterminate time before the bloodlust ran out, twenty of us against one of him. He roared in what may have been anger but certainly _sounded_ like surprise, and planted Gorribal into the ground, the fires rising up it. He brought his fists up to the sides and then slammed his knuckles together. The blast of air tossed everyone around him back like leaves, in addition to blasting back a ring of snow. He curled his right hand up to him, something black flashing in it. He didn't even seem to notice our assault die off as Turaniles shouted for us to _get back!_

He stepped back and thrust out his right hand, an _enormous_ orb of blackness, the size of a dragon, forming around it. The air was pulled out of my lungs, and I leaped backwards. The suction was incredible, tearing at me. It seemed like the entire world had been turned to the side, every piece of my body wanting to fall into the orb, my body tearing itself in two. I noticed someone - I couldn't tell who - lose their footing out of the corner of my eyes. They flew through the air into the black hole, and that was the last I ever saw of them. Then my heart flew into my throat, taking my stomach with it, when I tripped over a protrusion of ice. I only flew through the air for a moment, however, because Sargeras ended the attack by screaming in pain.

I got to my feet and looked at him. His metallic skin was blazing yellow-hot, and it seemed to have several cracks running along it, ones that Sargeras was busy welding shut.

I found my voice, merging it with a dozen others. "Attack!" We released our assault, pouring on our assault. Pets clawed at him, bullets shot at him, shadow bolts flew. I focused myself to shoot even quicker, rapidly firing at Sargeras while he was down. After a few seconds he'd repaired himself and cooled back down to red-hot. He grasped Gorribal shakily, betraying weakness - we could kill him, we were hurting him! - and stood in a casting stance again, raising his sword to the sky. I thought he was going to unleash another explosion of fire, but instead, after a short cast time, scorching fire surrounded him, burning off my eyebrows even through the essence of the Red Flight.

The shell of blazing fire protected him from our attacks, and I knew all too well what he was going to do. It was common practice. Shield yourself to prevent distractions, then unleash a massive spell while you are safe from interruption.

Sure enough, heavy ropes of fel fire coiled around the Titan's left hand, which he raised clasped onto his right. We unleashed everything we had at the shield, hoping against hope to break it in time to interrupt his spell.

He raised Gorribal up with two hands, the flames burning along the sword flashing sickly emerald. Five fel pyroblasts flew out, each one finding their mark. Each one killed a _healer. _They fell down with gaping holes in their stomachs, Ysera's blessing trying but failing to save them as they fell down and stained the snow pink.

An instant later, the shield shattered under our assault and Katalyn interrupted his spell with a sharp kick to his knee. He swung his sword back, fires turning back to normal, and stabbed at the spot the rogue had been an instant before. If only none of us had died earlier! We could've broken the shield in time, and already I could feel the pain of his explosive curse of agony tearing at my soul.

Sargeras ran towards a cluster of casters and swung his sword, and all at once I understood who had fallen into the black hole. It had been _Alex._ Four heads rolled. Sargeras spun around and leaped into the air, once again coming down and smashing his sword into the melee group, knocking them back and sending fire rushing outwards. He raised his sword while they were in mid air, skewering Orande through her stomach, the sword so large he nearly ripped her in half. He tossed her aside, looked my way, and extended his left hand.

I grunted in pain, my shot going wide, as net-like shadows wrapped around each of my limbs, my torso, and my neck. The magical energy burned my neck, intense despite Verthelion's blessing.

The next thing I knew the world was spinning around in dizzying circles, air rushing past me. I came to a rest with a sickening _crack_ of my bones that couldn't possibly heal quick enough, and I screamed in agony.

That proved to be a big mistake, because I breathed in _fire, _scorching the insides of my lungs. I desperately leaped away from the fire trail Sargeras had tossed me and several others into, gasping for breath that wouldn't come to my burned lungs, before the warmth of healing magic - now mostly from Ysera's blessing - repaired the damage. Screams of pain came from beside me, and I forced myself not to look at my guildmates, my friends, as they burned alive from not being able to get out quick enough.

I took more shots, but the situation was very clearly critical. From our original twenty-five we were down to six. Droga was trying to fend of Sargeras, but with the fire novas, curses, fireballs raining from the sky and all around _chaos_ of the situation, combined with the Dark Titan's incredible strength and skill, the orc was getting cut up badly.

"_ENOUGH!_" Suddenly, Sargeras thrust his hands to the side and lifted up. Something like invisible ropes wrapped around me, and I was lifted into the air, my bow arm pinned to my side. I struggled, but the ropes tightened until it was a struggle to breathe. I managed to look around, and saw that the situation was worse than I thought. There was Droga, Katalyn, and Mariel, as well as Fluffy. That was it. Sara and Moalesh hung limply in the air. While we floated in the air, Sargeras held the hand not holding his sword out, silvery light pooling in his palm. There was a massive tug on my being, rainbow colored lights flowing out of us and into Sargeras's hands to form a multicolored orb, which he shattered like glass before dropping us on our knees.

In mere seconds I was exhausted, Sargeras's aura draining my energy to nothing without the Aspects' blessings to replenish it. He chuckled ominously, blazing yellow hot, and at that moment I knew I was going to die. He raised Gorribal up with two hands, fel fire flowing along it to prepare another pyroblast volley. This was it, the end of the Kingslayers.

A deafening blast of noise echoed through the Storm Peaks, bouncing off the mountains and rustling the snow. Sargeras's spell stopped from the surprise, and I would've held my ears in pain if I could've mustered the energy.

Then everything faded away. Heavy purple mist hung in the air, and everyone else vanished. One at a time the rest of my allies, including my cat, reappeared, but the Titan himself did not.

There were hands helping me up. Gloved hands, with fur insulting them, and a woman's voice shouting in my ear, barely audible above the ringing. "Come on, up! Up! We've got to go!"

Move. Right. Move. Have to move. I stood, but was wobbling. "Jason, can you heal her?"

"One minute, healing the others," came someone's voice from far away. After a few more seconds, I felt waves of Holy Light washing over me, restoring my strength. I refocused my vision, and suddenly understood why Sargeras was gone, and why the snow was tearing itself up like something very strong was throwing a tantrum. Amanthe had saved us, just in the nick of time, and pulled us into the twilight realm. A little late, but who could blame her? Getting close to a battle with Sargeras was undoubtedly difficult.

After a few more tense moments of patching us up, we gathered together around Amanthe and Jason, shivering in the cold now that the blessings were not there to warm us. "Come on!" Amanthe shouted frantically. "We've got to get out of here! The twilight realm won't help if Sargeras spikes the snow under you!"

Right. Got to run.

We followed after Amanthe and Jason as they lead us through the mountains, using shields of Holy Light to ward off the mountains' chill. Behind us the roaring of shattering snow slowly quieted down as we got further and further away. Once we were far enough, Amanthe pulled us into a cave hanging halfway up a mountain, sheltering us from the biting cold, frigid even within the twilight realm. The one saving grace was that, by then, the ringing in my ears had stopped.

Once within the mist-covered cavern, I collapsed against a rock. Katalyn did as well, the worgen letting her daggers fall to the ground. Only when they clanged on the ground did I realized I'd been gripping Thori'dal so hard I couldn't feel my fingers, and set down the bow. Droga also collapsed, as did Mariel. Fluffy pawed at my leg and whined mournfully, as if he knew the magnitude of the tragedy we'd just undergone.

Katalyn got her voice back first. "We... we need to get word back to Hyjal. We need to tell them we've failed. They've _got_ to prepare for... I don't even know."

"I'll tell Selriona," Amanthe said. "And she'll tell everyone else."

The worgen growled, still in her canine form. "Couldn't you have gotten us _sooner?_ Damn it, four of us alive. That's less than a fifth!"

The human narrowed her eyes at Katalyn. "Well _I'm sorry_ for not being able to see how many of you were still left at every single second, and _I'm sorry_ for having to run away from that black hole just like everyone else, regardless of realm!"

"If it weren't for - !"

"Alright, enough," Droga stated, his shield and sword resting aside from him. His spiked red armor left holes in the snow floor where he leaned against it. "We can not do anything now. Sargeras won that battle. Thank the ancestors that the Aspects did not come with us. Such power... it would've been a disaster. BUT, perhaps victory can still be salvaged."

"Please explain how," Jason asked suspiciously, looking the orc out of the corner of his eyes.

"We must go to Ulduar. We must save the Watchers there. Our guild saved them from Yogg-saron in the past." He looked my way. "Ellemayne knows them. They'll listen to us, we can convince them to come to our aid. Perhaps, with their power and knowledge, we can formulate a plan to vanquish Sargeras."

Katalyn sighed. "As much as it pains me to leave Sargeras running around, we _do_ need help." She looked towards Amanthe. "Any idea what that wall of noise was?"

She shook her head. "I asked Selriona, but she's in a battle now so she's _kinda_ busy." She shrugged. "We're on our own for now. I could portal us back to Grim Batol, however I also made an anchor point to Ulduar." She groaned. "Made me damned thirsty too. I could portal us _there,_ but those are the only two places I can bring us to. If we go to Ulduar, we can sneak past the twilight realm to the Watchers and present our case." She frowned. "I have to rest a little, though. I had to pop into the physical realm to pull you in here, and Sargeras almost drained my mana dry in that time."

Mariel settled against the wall with an exaggerated yawn. "Welp, guess that means it's time to sleep!"

I looked his way confusedly. "Mariel, it's the middle of the day."

The blood elven warlock waved it off. "Yeah, yeah. I'm _tired. _I don't know about you, but if we're gonna be going to go help Ulduar against the invading Legion, I'm taking a nap. See ya!" With that, Mariel leaned back and closed his eyes. I didn't think he was serious, but when his breathing leveled off after a few moments, I was quite surprised. Then I reminded myself this was _Mariel Shadowray._

Droga sighed as gentle snores filled the air. "As much as I hate it, we do need to recover." He looked at our two saviors. "Magical healing only goes so far, after all. We should get some rest."

Amanthe nodded, as did Jason, who was the next to speak. "Right. You four..." Fluffy mewed. "Um... five, I guess, take a breather. We'll keep watch. Relax, you're safe here. Sargeras can't find you."

I sighed, leaning back against a snow 'bed'. Another shell of Light engulfed me, warming my body and warding off hypothermia, in addition to my brown and green, forest-patterned armor. "Thank you... I'll see you later..."

With that, I allowed my eyes to fall shut, the exhaustion from fighting and being drained by Sargeras taking its toll on me. Some part of me couldn't understand what had happened there on that snowy plain. We were the Liberality Confederacy. We killed Illidan Stormrage, Old Gods. The Lich King and Deathwing. How, _how_, could we lose? It just didn't add up. We never lose. We couldn't lose.

But we had.

Then I was in the realm of dreams.

* * *

><p>Amanthe<p>

Before long the last of the Kingslayers were asleep. Well, if I wanted to be technical about it, only one of them was a Kingslayer, Ellemayne. She was the only one old enough. Mariel was a blood elf, just into adulthood despite his no-doubt incredible powers, which put him at around ninety years old. He had auburn hair, a staff with wicked crystals glinting in it and circling the head, chilling blue fire enveloping it, and blood red robes.

Droga wasn't old enough either. The orc warrior would be _maybe_ fifty. Not exactly in his prime, but given his profession, still young enough to be a very formidable force.

Katalyn was busy sleeping as well, her fur sliding back into her body as she subconsciously reverted to her human form. Her nose changed shape, her snout shortening, body features changing seamlessly until she was a young woman with black hair, her dark eyes hidden beneath their lids. Her black leather armor was embroidered with the symbol of Gilneas on her left shoulder, which was strange. Wasn't the Liberality Confederacy neutral? In any case, she'd placed a belt off to the side, which held her two daggers and several vials filled with gently frothing poisons.

In between Katalyn and Ellemayne, the storm-colored feline was sound asleep on its stomach, forelegs forming a headrest. It reminded me a lot of the position Selriona liked to sleep in. And they _all_ looked silly, eyebrows burned off and hair singed.

Jason sighed, the sound partly muffled by the coat going over his nose so it didn't get frostbite. Only our eyes were visible. "So, what now? We just wait and keep them warm?"

I nodded. "Yeah. Luckily, it's not as cold in the twilight realm as the physical realm. Don't really know how it works, but thank the Titans it dilutes weather." I sat down on a snow bank, looking outside the cave mouth toward the purple fog-engulfed Storm Peaks. Jason sat next to me, us huddling together to share warmth since, even with everything else, it was still _cold._ I spoke another few words of power, shielding our allies again. But not us. Best not to waste the mana on us. "Okay, so let's go over what we know," I said.

"The Dark Titan has just mopped the floor with the greatest fighting force ever. Hyjal is under full attack, there was some major explosion somewhere, and from what your friend told you, the Legion is keeping the Horde and the Alliance cities under siege. She's also told us that the demons and the cultists are working together, they have an air force of skeletal dragons, and Ulduar's defenses are probably crumbling as we speak."

I glared at him, punching him in the shoulder playfully. "_Thank you,_ Captain Sunshine." I sighed as he punched me back. "What are we gonna do? We need something very powerful to beat Sargeras. We can't win until we do. Even if we wipe out all his armies, and the Old Gods' armies, if we don't kill him he can just go around and kill all of us."_  
><em>

"He can't be _that_ powerful," he said. "Yeah, he's not good news, but everything has a weakness. What's his?"

I shrugged. "The cold, I guess. He's hot, the cold stuns him. But as soon as he's done with Ulduar, I doubt he'll stick around."

"What about frost magic?" he suggested.

I pondered this. "Hmm, maybe. All the world's mages, and the Blue Flight, and the shamans with their water elementals. That might do _something_. But it's not _just_ Sargeras, it's all his armies as well_._"

"Look who's Captain Sunshine _now_," he teased. Then he grew somber. "We'll figure out something. We have to."

I nodded. "Right. Right."

A dull throb appeared right above my ears. I turned to Jason. "One moment, Selriona's contacting me."

_'Hey, you got a moment?'_

_'Yeah, what's up? How're things in Hyjal?'_

She sighed. _'Well, we're holding, barely. Those damned fel wyrms are kicking our tails, but we can hold.'_

_'Aren't the Aspects fighting them?'_

_'They are, but apparently the leader of the fel wyrms is both strong enough and skilled enough to take them all on at once. Don't know how, but it's happening. But all in all, we're holding. How's the Liberality Confederacy?'_

_'Almost all dead.'_

_'What?! What happened?'_

_'Sargeras kicked their asses, that's what happened. Thank the Titans the Aspects didn't come too, otherwise...'_

_'I don't want to think about that. Verthelion dying... nevermind that! How many could you save?'_

_'Only four and a pet, I'm afraid. Ellemayne, Droga, Katalyn, and Mariel.'_ The following silence was so long I thought maybe the link had broken. _'Um, you still there?'_

_'What? Um, yeah.' _Her voice carried the hesitant tone that it had carried when, long ago, I'd asked her why I needed to learn how to use twilight flame. Was this related somehow? Had she foreseen all this? I shook my head. No, that was absurd. She couldn't, wouldn't do that. _'Where are you now? Are you safe?'_

_'Yeah, we're good. Found a cave to hole up in, Sargeras will never be able to find us. Especially with the twilight realm. Anyway, I have a few questions.'_

_'Shoot,' _she said.

_'What in the world was that explosion? You heard it too, right?'_

_'Yeah, I did. According to the Earthen Ring... well... Un'goro Crater erupted.'_

_'You mean the volcano at its center?'_

_'No, I mean the _entire_ crater erupted. The shockwave traveled around the world.'_

_'Oh dear. What's that going to do?'_

_'Not really sure. The ash clouds are blowing over to the Eastern Kingdoms. Titans help them, I remember what it's like to breathe in volcanic ash.'_

_'How bad?'_

_'Volcanic ash is _rock._ Combined with the water in our lungs, it makes cement.'_

_'Shit.'_

_'Exactly what I said. Apparently there are other, farther-reaching effects. Something about lowered temperatures, but I don't really get it.'_

_'That'll hurt Sargeras,' _I pointed out. _'His body's red-hot, a cooler climate will weaken him.'_

_'Hope it does. Anyway, where are you planning to go?'_

_'We're planning to go to Ulduar and rescue the Watchers. They've got to know something that can help turn the tide of the war, and Ellemayne knows them.'_

_'Alright, I'll tell the Aspects of your plan.'_ A long pause. _'Amanthe, promise me you'll be careful. You _can't_ die.'_

_'I promise. Just as long as you don't die either, got it?'_

_'Alright. Stay safe, Amanthe.'_

_'I will. And in a few more hours, we'll be on our way.'_

To save Ulduar.

* * *

><p><strong>Well, that's a wipe! Please review, let me know what you think!<strong>

**I really have to thank everyone. You don't know what it means to me to have so many people enjoying this story. It, it really means the world to me. I know I sound like a broken record saying this, but _thank you._ Everyone who favorited, followed, reviewed, or just read and didn't review. y u no review!? I kid, I kid.**

**Thank you all so, _so_ much. It won't be much longer now.**


	41. Chapter 41:Old Allies

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Thanks to dharak for beta'ing this!**

**Chapter published 4/17/13**

* * *

><p><span>Layalith<span>

It was a beautiful, sunny day.

The birds in the Park were singing a melodious tune. Flowers of all shapes and colors sprouted in tight clusters. The sun beamed down from the cloudless sky with a gentle touch, warming to me but not enough to be scorching. The rays bounced off the bricks and the grass, illuminating everything in a soothing glow. The air was fresh with the smell of pollen, tree branches swaying in the breeze.

It was like the world was _mocking_ us. After the utter hell we had been witnessed - still witnessing - recently, the weather had the _nerve_ to be so pleasant?

If one looked closer at the Park, you could see hints that all was the opposite from 'well'. In several places the Park's greenery was gone, replaced by an earthen crater the size of a small house. The ground there punched straight down, fragments of metal shining in the craters. The brick houses surrounding the park had several craters in them, revealing shattered and scorched wooden frameworks. Masons were working on them in several places, but it was clear that they were stretched far too thin.

I walked down the streets slowly, exiting the Park. If the Park had been punished, it didn't compare to the Trade District and Old Town. Every night for the past few days, the Burning Legion summoned cannonballs from the sky like rain, blazing pieces of metal that shrieked through the air faster than the eye could track. There was no hint of their arrival before they came; they were too small to see from a distance, and you only heard them _after_ they had hit, releasing a deafening sonic boom. Not like I had to worry much about that; I had little hearing left as it was.

I hobbled across the canal bridge towards the Trade District, though I couldn't enter. Guards had sealed off the entrances, and indeed, the entire, former-heart of Stormwind's economy was militarized. There were cannons and sharpshooters on roofs, griffin riders taking up nests deeper in. Stocks of muskets and cannonballs pressed against the walls.

I approached the guards anyway, who moved to block me. Irritation flared in my chest. Did they not recognize me?

"Ma'am, you can not enter - "

"Don't ma'am me," I said with as much venom as I had left. "I'm a medic for your army and civilians, so let me the hells in!"

They cowed backwards. "Sorry ma'am. Didn't remember you."

I scoffed. "No surprise there. Got more important things to remember." I pushed past them, heading towards the makeshift clinic.

The Trade District was heavily shelled. Not only were there nearly twice as many craters, causing piles of rubble as buildings collapsed. In addition, fel energy glowed along several spots, the corrupted stones being removed by masons so that they couldn't do any harm.

Of course, I just _had_ to be in Stormwind when the Burning Legion opened siege. Now, I was trapped in the city, and as one of the relatively rare people with a grasp of healing magic NOT also involved in direct fighting, I had been conscripted into healing the citizens of the Alliance, Horde or not. True, relations between the two factions had been at an all time high, but it was still surprising. The only reason I'd been _in _Stormwind in the first place was because the ship I'd been taking to Stranglethorn Vale had run out of supplies early and had to stop at Stormwind to restock.

And now, here I was, stuck in the city while the military slowly evacuated through portals and the tram to help in the defense of Hyjal, leaving behind only enough to keep the Legion's forces tied up here. The airships, the 'pride and joy' of the Alliance army, were also leaving. No doubt my faction's were as well; if the demons were only besieging Stormwind, I'm a gnome.

Had I been younger, I'd have been part of the defense of the nightly invasions, swinging my sword and smiting the foul demons back to whence they came. But as it was, I was _old_, damn it. Four hundred years old. If I remembered correctly, that made me eighty in human years. My once red hair had turned pale gray, with only the faintest hints of orange tinting the roots. My azure eyes had, surprisingly, not decayed much. Wrinkles still lined my skin, my joints still had an ache that, while not forcing me to use a damn _stick_, severely impaired my ability to run. My thoughts weren't as quick, my tongue wasn't as sharp, and my physical strength had waned considerably even as centuries of using magic strengthened my mana. All thing considered, I'd aged successfully.

The Trade District's bank, now converted to an emergency hospital, was filled with the wounded. Soldiers and civilians, some recovering from long-term wounds, others recently pulled out of the rubble of a collapsed house. Scrawled on the outside of its doors, in what appeared to be charcoal, were the horrifically misspelled words 'We kan take eet!'. They had been left up for some reason, probably as a morale booster.

Inside, it was a different story. Patients were clustered together. Not so tightly that diseases could leap about like frogs, but close enough to conserve space, the luckier or higher-ranking ones given actual beds while the others were given blankets and pillows to recover on. The air stank with blood, medicine, and had the sharp smell of recently-cast magic.

I knelt beside a dwarf, one who, by the look of her armor stripped off and in a clump beside her, worked cannons. Or had, because she was unconscious. She had several large cuts throughout her body, and a nasty wound in the middle of her stomach slowly oozing blood. Light shone around my hands, directing healing magic into her. While I had never specialized in the healing powers of the Light, instead focusing on its powers to smite those who oppose me, even I could heal quite quickly. Within seconds, the wound sealed up, leaving nothing but the blood that had already seeped out. After a few moments of thought I walked through the bank to its rear, where other nurses and doctors kept supplies.

I gathered some water and returned to the dwarf, forcing her to drink to replenish her fluids. While some part of me, the part that had for two hundred and fifty years been at war with the Alliance, protested the action, I ignored it. Enemy of my enemy. As a paladin, there is _no_ greater enemy than the Burning Legion.

For an indeterminate period of time I aided the Alliance's medics, until I felt my energy waning. I leaned against a wall, breathing heavily. As relatively skilled with magic as I was, that was still exhausting.

A draenei came up next to me, resting his arm on my shoulders. I pulled away, a hint of barely remembered revulsion tickling my memories... "Miss, you look tired. You should go outside, get some fresh air."

"The windows are open," I pointed out after a moment's thought, motioning towards the windows where the sky could be seen outside.

"Doesn't compare to fully being outside. Go, we can handle it from here. Thank the Light that the attack last night was light."

I rolled my eyes. "Poet."

"Hmm?" After a second he turned his head and chuckled. "Wouldn't you know it. But honestly, ma'am, go outside."

I scoffed. "Ma'am. Everyone's calling me ma'am now that I'm old." I turned out the door and into the open air of Stormwind.

It was already sunset. This was rather alarming for me, because that was always when the Legion attacked. I'd better start getting to a nearby shelter. Normally I could take shelter in the hospital, which was protected by mages so that the injured within wouldn't be blown to smithereens. However, the draenei that had shown me out was adamant I get some fresh air. Did he not know it was so late? Probably not. Fine. I'd show him. I'd take shelter elsewhere.

I stormed through the streets as best I could given my age and the _annoyingly_ prominent ache in my right knee. It grew darker and darker, the sun diving below the mountains, taking its red with it, the fiery color draining out of the sky like wet paint, replaced by a chilling blue, and later black, that heralded death.

The nearest shelter was in the Old Town, pressed against the mountains surrounding Stormwind. Each of the four shelters had a link to vast underground tunnels, so there was no problem with space. On the roofs, mages formed shields, using their magic to slow down time in a film above the shelters and pick off the incoming cannonballs before they could smash down with the strength of a hundred dragons. There were still civilians in the streets, but not as many as there would normally be. In the day, people walked with a hint of apprehension and _more_ than a little stubbornness, unwilling to allow the demons to simply march over them. In the night, they walked fearfully, heads to the skies, huddling in the tunnels, in the shelters, as the army fended off the Legion's half-hearted advances. The more adventurous people stayed outside, braving the bombardments like complete _morons. _Or they stayed in their defenseless homes, which were liable to turn into a pile of rubble in, quite literally, the blink of an eye.

I scowled at the night sky. I'd gotten out too late. I had to hurry to reach the shelter. I did _not_ want to be caught outside in a bombardment.

Then there was a gentle sigh behind me, and then suddenly I was on my hands and knees, the aches flaring into white-hot fires. A moment later a deafening blast resounded around me, shrill wining drowning out all other noise.

It took me several moments to figure out what had happened, pulling myself to my feet and looking behind me. There was a deep indent in the ground maybe ten meters behind me, rubble sprayed around it. My throat tightened. The bombardment had begun, and I wasn't safe.

I stumbled forward, more blasts of noise filling the sky as the few people left around me screamed and ran for cover, jostling me roughly. There was another explosion in front of me, the shrapnel blocked by a poor unfortunate soul who got speared in the throat. In any case, the shockwave knocking me on my back and squeezed the air from my lungs like a vice. For a few long seconds I laid there, gasping like a fish, before I got my breath back and got up. Instantly a wave of nausea crashed over me, making my vision swim. The continued ringing in my ears didn't help things at all.

Stumbling through the streets, explosions filling the air as cannonballs streaked down from gods-knew-where, barely even gray streaks as they slammed into the earth faster than sound. Already, fires were breaking out, filling the sky with smoke and ash and fire, setting the sky ablaze. I coughed as a small bit of smoke entered my lungs; I didn't need much to get set off.

I shielded my face as another explosion struck by next to me, leveling a food store. It burst into flames, vibrant ruby and orange licking at the sky, and I scowled. I'd shopped there before, two days ago when it had become clear I was trapped in this city. That stupid cook liked to make her lemon treats combustible, what an idiot -

I had no more time to think before I called to the Light, a dense magical shield forming around me. Half an instant later a massive explosion filled the air around me, a shell from high above impacting my divine shield and releasing its massive force in all directions. For several long seconds I couldn't see anything through the cloud of dust and smoke, sound ringing around my barrier before it fell, letting the settling dust into my space.

I pushed my way out, coughing vigorously, climbing my way out of the slight dent the shell's explosion had left, which was in _no_ way easy. I had to get out of the open. Even in a building, which could collapse, was favorable to being outside in the open, since there was more _space_ on the streets for you to be hit. That was logical, right?

I found the nearest building and slammed my fist on the door repeatedly. "Let me in! Let me _in!_" The door broke in, and I fell in, getting to my feet awkwardly, scowling. The gods were having a _blast _pushing me down tonight, weren't they?

The house I was in was empty. The residents had gone to a shelter, clearly. I couldn't go outside, not with the way the fire was raining. All I could do was sit there and wait as the _thud thud thud_ of the cannonballs shook my bones, each one seeming to be right above me. All I could do was hope and pray that nothing would strike the building I was in.

The _thud thud thud _was surely right above me now. They were close, I could sense it. This was it. I was about to die.

I shrieked as another, unusually loud one fell, making my ears ring again, the shockwave shaking me to my bones. I caught myself. Since when do I _shriek?_

Then the ceiling above exploded into splinters and fire, a speeding bullet sailing straight down. There was a spike of pain, a frozen moment of time, then the fire of a thousand suns as the explosion tore me apart.

* * *

><p><span>Selriona<span>

I sighed at her. "What is it _this_ time, Nalestrasza?"

My Red counterpart pawed at the ground awkwardly from where she sat on her haunches. Unlike me, she didn't have talon sheathes. We sat in the middle of Hyjal, for simplicity no doubt.

"Alright, I'll be honest. I feel _terrible._"

I raised an eye ridge. "You? For _what?_"

"For not applying myself!" she wailed, looking at me. "I have all this intelligence at my disposal, and all I usually need is a few moments of thinking to know the answers to... well... just about anything! But the Burning Legion's another beast altogether. They have too many resources, too many numbers, too many _variables_, even for me to do it normally." She sighed, looking down shamefully. "I haven't tried calculating them because I was _lazy,_ alright? All my existence everything has been so _easy _for me, so... so... I didn't want to push myself, alright?"

Her wings flattened against her back, her tail curling between her legs. "It's my fault Sargeras returned, it's all my fault!" Anger flared in my crop. _Sargeras._ The whelpling murderer. My poor brood... Nalestrasza continued, not answering my thoughts. "I could've sat down and ran through the calculations for weeks and weeks, however long it would've taken! I don't get tired like you do, I don't need to rest." She laid on her stomach and closed her eyes, keening. "It's all my fault, I should've seen this coming, I should've warned you!"

My heart tightened at the sight of my Red counterpart beating herself up like this. The normally proud, spiteful, and arrogant Nalestrasza, pouting. "Nalestrasza, you didn't know - "

"I should've known!" she roared at me, getting back up. "But I'm going to make up for it. I've calculated why Sargeras is going to Ulduar. There is roughly a ninety-eight point two percent likelihood he is going to use the Titan instruments to reconstruct his true form, then take possession of it."

My jaw sagged.

"The other one point eight is divided among corrupting the Watchers, its army, taking extracts from the rotting brain of Yogg-saron, and so on. It's the ninety-eight that we need to worry about."

I sighed. "Why can't anything be _simple?_" I shook my head to convey my utter disappointment in the whole of reality and whoever was in charge of our universe. "Anything else we should know?"

Nalestrasza returned the nod, a shamed glint in her eyes. "He likely has some form of teleportation device. How else could he have teamed up with Tsa'thannon? Gonna block him, by the way. You won't hear a word he says. Anyhow, this device of his must be broken, otherwise Ulduar would be long reduced to dust. So he gets to Ulduar in, given the increasing cold as you go north and how hot I hear he is, another three days. Not long after, Ulduar's gonna be broken, no matter what. Then he'll start hauling ass to Hyjal. There's a seventy-five percent chance his teleporter won't be active, so it's another week for one of his wyrms to fly back and bring him over. On that twenty-five percent chance, it's straight to Hyjal for him, and we all die." She grimaced, clearly not liking this next prediction. "Nordrassil gets drained, Tsa'thannon escapes, and that'll be that. End of the world, even if we _do_ manage to kill him, because he's the last Old God."

"So if Hyjal falls, we're all fucked. And the Watchers?" I asked nervously. "If they're saved, how'll they do?"

She sighed. "It gets fuzzy here. I don't know how they work, how they think. Even with Sargeras it's estimates. They may stubbornly refuse to leave - that's about a fifty percent. They may come help us fight. Thirty percent. They may be calling the Observer here to help them in their defense - twenty five. And lastly, they AND the Observer may join in Hyjal's defense. That's only a five percent chance."

"Okay, good to know. I'll tell the leaders of each faction as soon as you wake me up."

"There's more, too!" She stood up, which made two of us. "The burning tauren? That's Saltio. You don't remember her, but I do. She almost killed Amanthe in Orgrimmar three hundred years ago. Remember, when you fought Mal'ganis?"

"Oh!" I said. Then shook my head, the scruff of my neck wobbling side to side. "I don't remember her in the _least_, but sure."

"Right. Well, besides her, the cult will most likely be staging a two-part assault with the Burning Legion. A pit lord, possibly two. Faceless shock troops, elementals, fel wyrms - you know what? I'll just give you it directly." She closed her eyes, electricity sparking around her ruby scales, arcs of lightning between the shredded membrane of her left wing. My eyes widened, pupils slitting, as torrents of information suddenly made their presence known to me. In my mind's eye I saw maps of Hyjal, forces moving about them. Counterattacks. Counterattacks to the counterattacks. A larger view of Azeroth. A smaller view of each battleground.

Nalestrasza flopped down. "Alright. That took... quite a lot out of me. Alright, you know everything there is to know. I'll get to work on... on looking further. Wake up now."

Then I opened my eyes, my weight returning as gravity once again became part of reality. My head buzzed as I sensed the Red Flight, before deactivating that part of my abilities. I didn't need to know at the moment.

I gasped for breath, getting to my paws. I remembered where I was. Sleeping, Mount Hyjal. Right.

I had to tell them of what I'd seen. Of the information Nalestrasza had given me. I stumbled my way towards Verthelion, who was currently engaged in tactical discussion with General Vajarn, both taking their mortal forms to conserve space. With so many dragons here, as well as mortals (With more teleporting in from Dalaran as the Kirin Tor mobilized), it was a tight squeeze. Most dragons perched in the mountains surrounding Nordrassil when they weren't out fighting.

"This powerful wyrm you speak of must've been training for a while. Very long, in fact, with the sole purpose of fighting you Aspects and killing you, Verthelion. Splitting up will let him hunt you down and end you one by one. It's not an option."

"But what if he leaves us? Pushes a fight on his own? What then?"

"He won't, because that frees you up to do the same."

At that moment I entered the meeting. "Selriona," my mate greeted. He might've smiled, but I couldn't tell beneath his dark purple armor. "You're up. How're you feeling?"

"Nalestrasza told me a lot of things. She... imprinted predictions for the defense in my memories, and I _have_ to tell you them before I forget."

With that, I threw myself over the table that they had maps over, scribbling with pens in Draconic, forming lines, formations, and all sorts of other things. I had to be careful not to slice the writing utensils apart with my metal claws, however. The others watched transfixed as I wrote and wrote, until finally, I'd covered about ten maps in writing. "There. That's everything she had. She's working as hard as she can to predict the course of this war."

Vajarn looked over them in awe. "The level of detail of these, of strategy... I've never seen anything like it!"

"She's very smart," I said. "Can you two sort over that for now? I'm already forgetting some of it, and I need to warn Amanthe."

Verthelion nodded. "Sure. Go ahead."

"Thanks," I said, swirling around and turning to my true form so I could move away faster. I didn't know where I was going, but I needed to go away. The information Nalestrasza had crammed into my mind was dizzying, even as it leaked away, disorienting me. I was lucky I'd gotten it down in time.

_'Amanthe!'_ I said, opening the link.

_'Mm? Huh? Wha?'_

_'Wake up, you squishy human! This is VERY important!'_

_'Yeah, yeah. I wasn't sleepy, I was tired. What is it?'_

_'Nalestrasza just gave me a TON of information. Okay, okay. You have about three days until Sargeras reaches Ulduar. Think you can reach it in that time?'_

_'I've got a portal there. The Kingslayers are there already, I just had to pop into Grim Batol for my armor. I literally just joined back up with them.'_

_'Can you?'_

_'Easily, yeah. Slip in past the demons with the twilight realm, all is good.'_

_'Okay, listen to me. When you get to Ulduar, you have GOT to convince the Watchers to destroy as much as they can. It's almost certain Sargeras is going to use Ulduar's forges. He's going to use them to recreate his true form, and you know what'll happen if THAT succeeds.'_

_'Fuck.'_

_'Yeah, fuck. Have them destroy what they can, then talk them into coming to Hyjal to help with the defense. If Nordrassil falls, the last Old God escapes, and he's probably at full strength now after so long regenerating.'_

_'Yogg-saron was very powerful, and he had three hundred fewer years of strengthening,' _Amanthe mused. _'As he grows stronger, he'd be able to heal himself. Alright, I'll get right on it.'_

_'Amanthe.'_

_'Yeah?'_

_'Good luck.'_

_'Ditto.'_ Then the link's pressure faded.

By then I was nearing the mountains, nearing the place where injured dragons went to be healed. I could smell blood all the way from over here. As I watched, three figured descended into the mass of dragons resting on grass, bringing someone injured there. There were too many injured, far too many fallen. The fel-wyrms weren't many, but they could control us with their breaths, and their leader, whoever he was, could raise our fallen to add to his numbers. Was this how the mortal races had felt, during the war with the Scourge?

There was a whoosh of air before me, and a flash of brilliant golden light. The space around the blaze seemed to distort, drawn inwards for a moment before the glare died down and returning to normal. Before me was now a bronze dragon, less bulky than I as the Bronze Flight tended to be compared to others. I also knew her very well, judging by the pattern her scales took on her face.

"Chronormu," I greeted. She looked out of breath, flakes of time energy falling around her like snow.

"Selriona, you've got to come now! We need you to help our patient!"

I realized she must've been one of the people carrying the new patient in a moment ago. I nodded, my eyes hardening. "Got it. Lead the way."

"Good, good." She turned tail and began to lead me towards the 'infirmary' for my kind. As we neared, I couldn't help but grimace as I saw the sea of multicolored bodies, nowhere near enough of them up and about, healing others. Chronormu stopped next to a red female, laying on the ground and whimpering in agony. The grass around her seemed to be burned away. To my heart-stopping horror, she had a small patch of twilight fire on her right side flank, facing up. A blue was trying to weaken the flames, breathing ice over the searing wound, but he could only slow it down with out the proper magic to cleanse it. But my true horror laid with recognizing just _who_ had been blasted with my kind's signature flames...

"Mother!" I shouted, bounding over to her, shoving Chronormu aside with my larger weight. I reached into myself, pulling on my vast magical reserves. I opened my mouth and breathed in, my magic drawing the twilight fire off my broodmother Calestrasza, into myself where they did no harm. In seconds, the fires stopped burning, exposing the horrifically burned flesh beneath, the scales long gone and the flesh colored purple. I desperately wove several twilight mends on her, watching the flesh turn slightly rusty and her whimpers quiet. A few drakes, laying on their stomachs with broken wounds, looked at me. I looked their way as well and poured healing magic on them, stopping when the diminishing returns grew too great.

I looked down as my broodmother raised her head, Chronormu and the blue I didn't recognize stepping back. She opened her mouth slowly. "Selriona..."

"Mother..." I leaned down and nuzzled her comfortingly. My broodmother. I'd almost lost my broodmother. To my own flames as well! And I wouldn't even have known if it weren't for Chronormu. Or would I? I'd been headed there anyway. "Who... who did that to you?"

She tried to get up, but roared in pain when the burned flesh strained, collapsing back. "One of the fel wyrms. Must've been in your Flight in life. Breathed your fires on me. Thank the Titans I only received a glancing blow. The other wasn't as fortunate..."

I froze. The _other?_ By the gods, what was that _like?_ To burn alive in our shadowy flames? Ever since the Cataclysm, those incidents were almost unheard of. The worst that ever happened was a spar going out of hand, with others nearby cleansing the flames before it got too bad. Memories flashed behind my eyes, inside my earplates, of me felling drakes with precise fireballs to the face, of breathing out a burning river on immobile whelps while they begged for mercy...

I shook my head. Why was I thinking of these things_ now?_ I never thought of them otherwise. Perhaps it was just in the nature of war to bring one's worst memories to surface.

"Mother, where was this?"

"Just south of the Shrine of Goldrinn. Above the now-incinerated Regrowth. We were patrolling when they ambushed us. It was like they knew where we were..." I had a feeling Nalestrasza would be _all_ over that information. Her eyes focused on my left wing and widened. "What happened to you? Are you alright, my daughter?"

Blood rushed to my face. _Daughter. _It had been so long since I'd heard her call me that. "My... my wings were shredded eight decades ago. The roots are gone. I'm grounded."

She gasped in horror, as did several of the others listening, whispers of apologies filling the air around me. I felt Chronormu's wing on my back, but when I turned around, she was gone. "Selriona... I'm _so_ sorry. How do you stand it?"

"My friends and mates helped me. Verthelion, Pallasion, Amanthe, Murdonia..." I shook my head. "What's done is done, let's not dwell on that. You're hurt. Broodmother, do you need anything? Water? Food? I can get those for you."

She laid her head back down. "Water, please."

I nodded. "Right away, mother. Please, just take it easy. I'll be right back." I turned around and ran to find some water. I could only hope the Watchers could pull some doomsday device out of their asses, because I _highly_ doubted we could hold Hyjal forever.

Especially with no way to kill Sargeras.

* * *

><p><span>Amanthe<span>

My armor would be put to good use.

The scale-armor was cool against my skin, flexible enough to allow movement, yet its shadow-resistant properties couldn't be denied. In a full-scale war with the Burning Legion and what remained of the Twilight's Hammer, Selriona's shed scales would prove invaluable. While not as immune to shadow as they had been before she lost them, they could still protect me from seeds of corruption, shadow bolts, and the like. I'd put _that_ to the test already, on Argus.

But this wasn't Argus; this was Ulduar. And it was clear that its defenders weren't doing well.

During my time watching over it, I'd quickly grown used to the magnificent sight. A golden bridge that lead to a gargantuan complex, spires of gold and silver rising high into the skies, dwarfing the mountains that were supposed to hide it from sight. The shear _scale_ of the Titan city was beyond comprehension, iron constructs walking about in tight, organized lines with even gaits, almost mechanically, from building to building. From the distance I usually viewed it from, they were like ants marching about to an unheard order. The very air about the complex buzzed with energy and electricity.

Now, however...

Even though none of the demons themselves were in the twilight realm, their machines still existed in both. The bright colors were marred with constructs of black and green, their spiked and chaotic designs contrasting heavily with Ulduar's smooth and ordered buildings, several of which had black smoke pouring out of their walls. Another had collapsed entirely into rubble. Judging by the look of things, the Burning Legion had penetrated all the way towards the main complex; the Halls of Lightning and Stone were in the very heart of their camp, snow melting in wide sloughs, creating rivers that ran down the chasm separating Ulduar from the mainland. Dark smoke poured into the air out of their machines, adding to the thick aura of red mist hanging over the area. Fel-cannons by the dozens were aimed towards Ulduar's gates, flashes and streaks of green signaling their blasts. I hoped they wouldn't see us in the twilight realm, though I highly doubted it. They were machines, they only attacked what they were programmed to. And just because we could see them didn't mean they could see us.

What remained of the Liberality Confederacy was huddled up to conserve heat. Luckily for them, I came bearing gifts.

"I come bearing gifts," I said, dropping the fur coats on Mariel, who collapsed under the sudden weight, his staff clattering on the stone-hard ice. "Those'll help keep you warm," I explained as they put them on, the spikes of Droga's armor sticking through the coat. They looked like they'd be outright _deadly_ in a body slam. "Hurry, we need to get into Ulduar as soon as possible. Selriona just contacted me, we've got maybe three days before Sargeras gets here."

"How does she know that?" Katalyn asked hotly, slipping into her coat. That meant two layers of fur for her, now. "She's all the way in Hyjal, what could she possibly know?"

"She's got ways," I said, thinking of Nalestrasza. Why had she decided _now_ to start calculating the future? Would it have killed her to start a bit earlier? "Everyone ready to head in?"

The worgen pushed herself next to me. "We're _ready__, _Amanthe. Follow me."

I bristled. Who was she to boss me around? I was three hundred and thirty years old while, even as slowly as worgen aged, she couldn't have been more than sixty - !

I sped up my pace, walking neck and neck with her as the others followed behind us. Katalyn looked my way, a snarl forming on her snout, and sped up again. I pushed myself a bit faster.

"Alright you two," said Ellemayne from behind us. Like a cheetah she zipped in front of us, legendary bow fastened to her back. "I can see where this is going. I'm the oldest here, I'll lead. Besides, I'm the one who knows the Watchers, not you."

I bit down a protest, and so did Katalyn. We looked at each other with one more hateful glare before separating, her going to Droga, and I to Jason. Mariel walked in between us, right behind Ellemayne, as we walked through Ulduar, the Liberality Confederacy looking about nervously.

And by the Titans he would not stop _talking!_

"See that building over there? That's the entrance to the Halls of Stone."

"I know, Mariel," I said.

"And that right there! Prime Legion Teleporter. Hmm, seems different. They've been busy working on their technology. Oh, that over there is a forge, it's how they repair their armor and weapons. Need to take that out."

"I know, Mariel," I said.

"Over there's a... oh crap crap _crap_, I think they're making a fel reaver! I'd know that head anywhere! All fel reaver heads look the same, you know? They have vents out the back, those are the weak points. Take those out, clog them, whatever, and the whole thing melts down."

"_We know, Mariel!_" Ellemayne shouted back at him.

The warlock paused for a moment, blinking, then resumed his chatter as we crossed the Legion camp unnoticed, our footsteps not even leaving prints in the hard ice. "So anyway, over there you can see a - "

I tuned him out, watching the scenery pass. Soon enough, the red mist hanging over us, mist only _I _could see, thinned into filaments. We were entering contested territory.

The main Titan complex of Ulduar was a gauntlet of machines, a narrow channel with huge walls on all sides that lead to a singular, massive door, demonic taint thinning out the closer we got to it. The door, however, was clearly damaged. Even as I watched, a fel-cannon seemed to grow out of the ground, the field-deployed weapon firing a shot at the door. It impacted, and even from what must've been half a kilometer away I could see the faint green flash, a _crack_ filling the air.

"The Watchers must be behind that door. Let's check it out," Jason suggested.

"This is where we fought the Flame Leviathan," Ellemayne said after a few minutes, as we traversed the massive terrace. "It broke through that wall to get to us. Looks like they rebuilt after we stormed through. So many memories..."

"It won't make a difference," Droga said harshly. "The moment Sargeras gets here, it's all for nothing. We've got to get the Watchers, fast."

"Well good thing we're right here!" Mariel said. "Look at this door. Crack in the bottom, slip right through, done!" He punched the air. "Score for Azeroth!"

"It's not that simple," I reminded the blood elf. Though that _was_ a crack, just large enough for us to slip through. But not large enough for the invading army. "Selriona also said that it's likely Sargeras will use Ulduar's forges to make himself his true form. We've got to help the Watchers sabotage Ulduar, _and_ get them out of here before Sargeras arrives." For a moment, all talk stopped as we, one by one, squeezed through the crack in the door to get closer to the Watchers. Fluffy just pranced on through without touching either side. I swear, if cats could smile...

"Hmmph. Never simple, is it?" Mariel asked as he slipped through to the other side. "Gotta do this, gotta do that! Well, we're here." He put a hand to his chin. "Hmm, if I were an immortal, powerful Watcher assigned by the Titans to keep... um... _watch_ over a Titan city, where would _I _be fending off an invasion?"

I massaged my temples, fending off a headache. _For the love of the Titans, Mariel, shut the hells up!_

"Maybe by those lightning fields?" Jason asked, pointing forward towards a square room at the end of the gargantuan hall, with lightning charging the air even within the twilight realm, thick coils of electricity spiraling through the air like serpents.

"XT double-o two," Ellemayne muttered as we entered the area. I noticed small spots of red flying around, before abruptly vanishing as they were struck down mere instants within each other. Where had _those_ come from? There wasn't a single demon between here and the door we just came through.

I prepared to pull us back into the physical realm when Katalyn shouted. "WAIT!" I did. "Think about this for a moment, from the Watchers' perspectives. They have been under heavy assault for days now, fighting nonstop. We're about to suddenly appear right before them, we'll be vaporized on the spot."

I grimaced. "I hadn't thought of that."

She snorted. "Of course not."

I glared at her, my fists tightening. "Alright - !"

"We can just go to them," Ellemayne said. "The Watchers are constructs by the Titans, they are not afflicted with the same impulsiveness we," She raised her fingers to make quotation marks. "'lesser beings' have. They won't blast us."

I gave her a sideways look. "Alright, if you insist. Just be ready to talk them down quick." I extended my magic, and pulled us into the physical realm, peeling back the choking violet fog that threatened to engulf the world. Then I saw the Watchers, and my jaw sagged.

I'd only heard stories of the four remaining Watchers of Ulduar. Mimiron the Inventor, Freya the Nurturing, Hodir the Frigid, and Thorim the Stormwatcher. I'd never seen them in person before.

Mimiron sat in the core of a collosal machine of war, its golden armor reflecting the light. It looked like some sort of mad conglomeration of multiple machines; a tank in the bottom, with some sort of cockpit holding the mechanical gnome in the middle. Said cockpit also had _hands, _its fingertips glowing with blue light. And its head was just that, a _head_. An oversized mechanical gnome head. The entire contraption towered over me, taller than a dragon, and though it seemed to have a few scratches on it, it seemed otherwise intact.

Freya stood off to the side, her earthen robes doing nothing to detract from her sense of majesty and perfection, little plants growing in between the tiles at her feet, emitting what appeared to be a toxin green gas that didn't travel more than a fraction of the distance to us. She was glowing with power, three incredibly potent enchantments around her; the glowing of the sun's blinding light, stone-like bark and iron-tough roots coiling around her legs, covering narrow gashes in her stone-like skin.

Hodir too stood impossibly tall, the ice-cold of Northrend turning impossibly frigid around him, icicles hanging from the small cuts the Legion had gotten on his metallic frame. The ground around him glistened with dew, and the air around him was moist, but not with water, that was all frozen. It was with air that had condensed into liquid form.

And last but most, Thorim. His gray skin stood out most out of them all. Lightning bolts emblazoned his armor and head, and they seemed to be more a part of the construct himself than decoration to his armor, complementing the glowing blue injuries across his bulging muscles. The thick sheets of lightning we'd seen striking down demons were gone now, seeming to be condensed around his mace, filling the air with the stench of ozone, the crackling making every one of my hair stand on end and my hair, tied in a ponytail as it was, frizz.

The Watchers instantly prepared to attack us. Freya's eyes glowed, and I could feel the sun above me grow in intensity. Mimiron's machine pointed its multiple guns at us, Hodir raised his mace, glowing with frost energy, and Thorim did the same. But the latter soon paused and held out a hand to stay his fellow Watchers.

"Hold, stay your wrath. These mortals, one of them is familiar." The incredibly tall giant stared down at Ellemayne, who didn't take a single step back under his static gaze, the rest of the Watchers looking at us, poised to vaporize us in an instant. "I remember you, elf. In the mountains."

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think!<strong>


	42. Chapter 42:Round Two

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Huge, huge thanks to my beta, dharak!**

**Chapter published 4/27/13**

* * *

><p><span>Amanthe<span>

It was surprisingly easy to get on the Watchers' good side.

Once they'd remembered who Ellemayne was, and she said we were with her, all was well. In all, it took about two minutes. It probably would have taken only one, but a swarm of doomguards descended upon us mid-discussion and we had to kill them. Mimiron's war machine took them out with terrifying speed, and we went back to discussing. In no time, Thorim declared that we would aid in the defense of Ulduar, and led us into the Antechamber of Ulduar.

I'd never been in the Antechamber, since you required special magic to access it, but just like when I'd seen Ulduar for the first time, my jaw dropped.

The entire thing, with its arches ceiling, was patterned bronze and gold, with several metals I couldn't even identify. Shimmering blue constellations of the various mortal races filled the alcoves. A tauren, a centaur, a night elf. Even a draenei, despite not being native to Azeroth. The Watchers lead us through the corridors until we arrived in a a huge intersection, the halls large enough for the Titanic constructs but dwarfing us. You'd think I'd be used to being around twenty-meter tall people after being part of a Dragonflight for the past three centuries, but they were _tall. _Even Mimiron, who'd gotten out of his war machine, was a head taller than I.

Once we'd stopped in a chamber that branched in four directions, one of which lead up stairs, Thorim and the others stopped. They turned around to look down at us.

"This is a safe spot," he boomed. "Ellemayne, it has been a long, _long_ time. You have come to aid us in our defense, then?"

Said kaldorei nodded. "Yes, we have. But Amanthe here - " She motioned to me, and four pairs of glowing eyes turned to me. " - has vital information regarding what you must do with the defense."

The Watchers kept looking at me intently, and I realized they didn't intend to speak first. Finding my nerve, I spoke up. "As we speak, Sargeras is coming for Ulduar. In three days' time he shall be here, and we _can not_ stand against him. We'll have no choice but to evacuate."

"Now hold on!" Mimiron spoke up in a high pitched, metallic voice. "We can not leave Ulduar! The information held within is invaluable to the continuation of this world, and with that fiend in the prison dead, it is our sworn Purpose to defend its knowledge from usurpers!"

"You don't have a choice," I hissed. "There's no way we can stand against the Burning Legion _and_ Sargeras. Once he's taken Ulduar, he's going to use its forges to reconstruct his body, possess it, and kill everything! Meanwhile, as we speak, Mount Hyjal is under attack, and if Nordrassil falls, the final Old God escapes and we all die anyway!"

"Are you suggesting," Freya asked dangerously, her smooth voice echoing with the cracking of stone. "That we must destroy the facilities of Ulduar in order to keep them from falling into the hands of the chaotic Legion? And then abandon Ulduar altogether to defend the World Tree?"

"Um," I said, fearing my next response. "Yes?"

"UNACCEPTABLE!" Hodir and Thorim bellowed, making me fall onto my back from the tidal wave of sound. Hodir picked it up. "It is our sworn duty to protect Ulduar! To actively _destroy _it is completely against our Purpose!"

"Indeed," Thorim said, his eyes crackling with lightning. "We will not do so! It is not an option. We must stop the mechanisms of Ulduar from falling into the Legion's hands!"

"But - " I protested indignantly, getting back up. "But - "

"Relax, Amanthe," Mariel said, stepping forward and pushing me back with a hand, making me stumble. "I got this." Simultaneously the Watchers turned their heads to Mariel. "Hello, how are you all?" Dead silence. Emphasis on dead. "That's great to hear! Now, answer me this. Your Purpose is to defend the knowledge of Ulduar from the Burning Legion. It is also to allow no harm to fall onto said information. BUT, now, what will you do if the only way to keep the secrets of Ulduar from the demons is by destroying them?"

All the Watchers began twitching, frozen in place. Sparks came out of Mimiron and Thorim, Freya stumbled about as if she'd lost her balance, and Hodir's mace nearly dropped out of his grasp.

"Well, if - " Mimiron began.

" - blood elf, we - " Freya continued.

" - the Titans gave us - " Thorim struggled to reason.

" - oh, you're a tricky one," Hodir growled. "Difficult... logic... to com-pute."

The four Watchers looked at each other for a few tense seconds, twitching, messages seeming to transmit between them. Finally, they looked back at me, and Thorim gave their answer. "We will destroy Ulduar's forges, and then aid in the defense of the World Tree." I breathed a sigh of relief. "But, that will not be simple." I groaned. Of course not. "Sargeras's legions hold control over the Halls of Lightning and the Halls of Stone. Through there, they are progressing towards the main complex through the side passages. The self-destruct mechanism for the forges is within the Halls of Stone, deep in Legion territory. In addition, we _must _defend the Antechamber."

There was a deep _thud_ as something, somewhere, blew up.

Thorim went on. "We have sent the signal for Algalon the Observer to come and aid in our defense." He looked at Ellemayne with a distinctly nervous look. "We are not quite sure _what_ you did in the Celestial Planetarium, elf, but regardless, we need him. If the Antechamber falls, the transmitter will malfunction and the Observer shall never arrive."

"Heh," she said nervously. "Hope we didn't make Algalon _too_ depressed or anything." I raised an eyebrow. A gallon who?

"When's he supposed to arrive?" Katalyn snapped. "We've only got three days. Less, the more we sit around talking about it!"

"As much as I hate it, Katalyn's got a point," I said. She growled at me. "When _is _this Algalon arriving?" Whoever he was, it sounded like if there was anyone who could stand against the Dark Titan it would be him.

"In the time-span of sixty-five hours. Not long before your estimate of Sargeras's arrival," Freya told me.

I bit down a swear. _Great._ "Well, I can help us destroy the forges. Pull us into the twilight realm and go disable them from within."

"What exactly _is_ this twilight realm?" Mimiron asked. "What are its special properties? Anything it can be used for in the physical realm?"

"It'll allow me and those with me to be safe from the demons. It'll also let us destroy the forges without being retaliated against. I can bring you four with me as well." I pondered this a moment, but before I could change the plan slightly, Jason beat me to it.

"Or, we 'puny mortals' could go disable the forges while the Watchers defend. Or maybe one of them comes with us since we have _no_ idea what to destroy."

"Oh, right!" Mimiron exclaimed. "As the overseer of the Corridors of Ingenuity, I shall accompany you on your quest to prevent our facilities from falling into their chaotic control." He looked at the rest of his Watchers. "I'd advise Ellemayne to remain behind to assist in the defense during my absence. She is most familiar with our powers out of the mortals here." The metal gnome froze a moment, before continuing. "Ah yes, I shall also press the Big Red Button! They shan't get a _thing_ from the Corridors! A moment, if you will. Once I return, we can get right to it! No time to waste, as you know." With that, Mimiron crouched, arcane orbs glowing in his hands. He jumped up, raising his hands, a blue glow engulfing him. When it faded, he was gone.

The other Watchers were still... well... _watching_ us. After a few moments spent drenched in awkward silence, Mimiron returned with a whoosh of arcane magic. He clapped his hands together. "Done! In ten minutes the Corridors of Ingenuity will be nothing but rubble. Now, on to the forges!"

"Hold," Freya said. "I believe these mortals are not quite ready to go on such an endeavor. After coming so far, through such cold, and judging by their energy, I would say they are malnourished." She turned to Thorim. "I will take them to the Conservatory and feed them, it is the only place with sustenance for..." She shot us a disgusted look, like how one might view a spider in their home. "fleshy creatures."

I bristled, but as if conjured by her words, my stomach growled. Oh, Titans. When was the last time I'd eaten? Saliva began pooling in my mouth as Freya let out a flash of arcane light, teleporting us to this 'Conservatory'.

And Titans, was it a _Conservatory. _Warm, moist air blasted my nose, a sharp contrast to the clean and sterile halls of Ulduar. The air smelled of dirt and grass, animals and leaves.

I was in what looked like an enormous jungle, with heavy trees forming thick canopies, a river murmuring through the area. We stood in the middle of a large clearing, the river forming a barrier on one side, the jungle on the other. Peering into the trees, I thought I saw a green drake looking back at me, just for a moment, before they vanished. But it must've just been my eyes playing a trick on me. Freya was there with us, the poisonous plants around her feet gone. She held her hands up, and vines sprouted from them. They surged outwards in three directions, and then retracted. Each one had, on their ends, a bundle of fruit. Bananas on one, fruit on another, and what looked like blueberries on the last. They reached Freya, looking _very_ small in the giant's hands, and she grasped them. The Watcher knelt, placing the fruit on the ground for us.

"The creatures of the Conservatory shall not attack you. Rest, eat. When you are ready to begin, you will find me in the Antechamber with the other Watchers." And with that, Freya teleported away, leaving the five of us to eat in - relative, considering there was a damn _army_ trying to get in - peace.

The fruit was good, I have to admit. Perfect texture, flavor, crispiness, it was probably the best food I'd ever eaten. I devoured it, suddenly overwhelmed by starvation. I also took off my jacket and twilight-scale armor, since it was stiflingly warm in the Conservatory. I left it on the ground, trusting I wouldn't need it anymore. Worst case scenario, I come back, shake a few bugs out of it, and put it back on. The others ate as well; Jason, Ellemayne, Droga, Fluffy, Katalyn, and Mariel. None of us spoke a word, even said warlock.

I decided to take the moment to contact Selriona. _'Hey, got a moment?'_

_'Yeah, what's... up?' _she asked, taking a moment to remember the mortal saying.

_'We've reached Ulduar and the Watchers are willing to help us disable the forges. They're also calling Algalon here in just under three days, whoever Algalon is.'_

_'Algalon is the Titan's herald,'_ she explained. _'Few centuries ago, before I was even laid, I hear that he came to Ulduar when the corrupt Titan construct Loken was killed, by the Kingslayers actually. He was to scan Azeroth and then send a message to the Titans telling them that either everything here was fine and dandy... or to come and kill everyone to start with a clean slate.'_

_'I'm guessing he went with the former.'_

She chuckled as I finished an apple, tossing the stem to the side. _'Yeah, good thing too. The Kingslayers had to beat it into him not to have Azeroth glassed, and then he just... left. Nobody knows what he's been up to.'_

_'Hang on. The Watchers are calling him back here?! What if he scans Azeroth again? And given that there is a giant war going on with demons, I kinda doubt he'll let himself be so easily convinced that we're 'fine and dandy'. What if he sends a message to the Titans to vaporize us now? I mean, with Sargeras here, and weakened, it's gotta be tempting to him...'_

_'Um... uh... talk him out of it?' _she suggested meekly.

_'Thanks, Selriona,__'_ I responded sourly. _'You've got some great advice.'_

_'Sorry, sorry.'_

I sighed. _'Well, anyway, how are things on your end?'_

_'As well as can be expected. We're organizing strikes on the Legion's camps as much as we can afford, as per Vajarn's orders. We take some people with us into the twilight realm, go down, blast them a bit, then retreat. Unfortunately, Nalestrasza predicts that today's the day we lose the Grove of Aessina, pushing as back the Shrine of Goldrinn.'_

_'Woopdy-doo.'_

_'I know, right? On the plus side, she predicts Kil'jaeden will lead the assault, and that Verthelion will kill him once and for all. So we have that.'_

_'Let's hope she's right on that account then. I gotta go help the Watchers blow up their forges. See you...in about three days, I guess.'_

_'Alright, bye. Gotta get to a fight now anyway.'_

_'Take care.'_ And with that, I closed the link.

We finished the meal fairly quickly, and then Freya, as if sensing that we were done, teleported back to us. She handed out fur jackets to those who didn't have them, let Jason and I put ours on (And my armor, which had a millipede crawling about its helm), and then she brought us back to the other Watchers.

Mimiron seemed fairly excited by the prospect of destroying a large portion of Ulduar; I could literally hear the gears turning in his head. "Excellent, excellent! Come quickly now, we mustn't tarry! Ellemayne, stay with the others." He waved the rest of us over to him. "Good good, follow me now!" He started off in a seemingly random direction. "The Legion's disabled the teleporter to within the Halls of Stone. We'll have to walk. It would be most appreciated if you could pull us into the twilight realm _now_, human!"

It took me a moment to realize he was talking to me. "Um, right. Sure." I brought my hands together, weaving my mana into several command lines, before finishing the spell. With a deafening _crack_, a portal to the twilight realm opened, howling slightly as air moved between the realms. "After you, Watcher," I said, motioning to Mimiron.

"Yes yes, indubitably!" He walked into the twilight portal, which swallowed him up, while the rest of the Watchers just stared at us mechanically. Katalyn walked over to Ellemayne.

"Stay safe, Elle," she said.

Ellemayne nodded, while I raised an eyebrow. _Elle?_ "I will. Have fun blowing everything up."

A wicked smile formed on Katalyn's features as she slowly transformed into a worgen. "Oh, you bet." And with that, Katalyn spun around and leaped into the twilight portal, the rest of us following soon after.

The moment we entered the twilight realm, I relaxed. The twilight realm didn't empower me, I wasn't a dragon, but over the decades I'd grown to find comfort in its swirling mists and shadows. The others, however, weren't nearly as relaxed. Jason fidgeted, and the others looked around nervously, as if expecting some eldritch horror to leap out of an alcove and eat them alive. Mimiron looked unfazed, however, as he teleported us outside the Antechamber.

It was night; we'd spent more time eating than I thought. The dark sky was tinted indigo through the twilight realm, heavy fog only partially obscuring the red glow of the Legion's activities.

"Remember," I told the others through a yawn. "This is a _stealth_ mission. The Legion can't see us, but step too hard on the ice and they'll see our footsteps. Our goal isn't to carve a bloody path through the Halls of Stone, it's to get in undetected, set off the self-destruct, and get out_ undetected_," I emphasized, looking directly at Mariel.

Slowly, the rest of us, even Mimiron, turned to look at Mariel. We stared him down for a few seconds before he held up his hands innocently. "What? Oh, you don't think I can be sneaky?"

"No," Katalyn replied. "I really don't."

"I agree with Katalyn," said Droga. "Stealth missions have never been your specialty, remember that time with the Bloodsail Buccaneers?"

He frowned, looking down at the ground. "Well the guards over at Booty Bay were _happy_ about that incident!" he defended himself.

I raised an eyebrow, looking over at Katalyn. So did Jason. "Do we want to - "

"No," she cut him off sharply, with a panicked look on her face. "You really don't."

"In either case," Mimiron interrupted. "It is high time we get started. Follow me, follow me, the Halls of Stone are not far from where I have brought us!" Mimiron turned around, heading towards a towering, somewhat-crumbled building I could only assume was the entrance to the Halls of Stone. Walking inside, I was very quickly alarmed by the massive amount of red mist, demonic corruption thickening as we went deeper and deeper. The Halls of Stone seemed... defeated, somehow. The machinery was deactivated, gears and cogs the size of a horse immobile. Places where I felt lightning should be crackling were inert. It was warm, but it was a sort of _stale_ warmth.

"They really wrecked this place," I heard Jason mutter.

"Yeah," I said. "Guess they don't want to risk operating this stuff without Sargeras's knowledge."

"Astute observation!" our mechanical guide said from infront. "Uploading to the Corridor's datab - oh, nevermind." Mimiron turned a corner, us continuing to follow him. I took in as much of the Halls of Stone as I could; it would likely be the last time I ever saw them. A circular chamber there, a little outlook into the Storm Peaks there...

"Here we are!" announced the Watcher, stopping in a strangely designed chamber. It consisted of a bridge extending down to a circle, which formed two more bridges, creating a 'T' shape. At the end of the two prongs were what looked like giant tubes, leading far into the ceiling. Below the 'bridges' were armies and armies of iron vrykul, thousands of them. They seemed to be without souls, not yet imbued with life. The fact that I could even _see_ them within the twilight realm was proof of that. Mimiron lead us down to the point of the 'T' where the three bridges branched off from it. I saw something there I hadn't seen from further away, a little golden console with shining white, purple-tinted lights on it.

Mimiron walked right up to it and cracked his knuckles. How he managed to do that, being made of metal, I would never understand. "Alright. This'll only take a moment." He placed his fingers onto the console and began typing away at it with impossible speed.

"Warning!" came a woman's monotone voice. It resonated throughout the Halls of Stone, bouncing off walls, vibrating my bones. "Unauthorized entity attempting Halls of Stone connection." The red fog around the area began to shimmer rapidly as demons began to run to and fro, trying to find out what was going on. "Contacting Watcher Mimiron."

Mimiron grumbled under his... do robots even _have_ breaths? "I know someone's trying. I'm the one doing it! Gah, grbrlr. What do you mean, unauthorized? Here's my authorization." He hit more keys.

"Authorization identified. Welcome, Watcher Mimiron. What would you like to do?" A moment of typing later... "Accessing Halls of Stone functions. Forges of Ulduar actions: Produce Iron Dwarves. Produce Iron Vrykul. Produce Earthen. Produce Iron Giants - Affirmative. Forges of Ulduar Self Destruct Mechanism initiated. This facility will self destruct in one minute." My stomach leaped into my throat. _What?_ It had taken us the better part of half an hour to get so far into the Halls of Stone!

"Excellent!" shouted Mimiron. "Now, so that they won't get any ideas..."

"Entering Lockdown on Forges of Ulduar. ALERT! Self destruct sequence now unavoidable. Sequence will continue regardless of over-ride codes."

"With all due respect, Watcher, are you trying to get us killed?!" Droga bellowed.

"Relax, relax," Mimiron said, turning away from his console.

"These forges will self-destruct in thirty seconds."

"As I was saying," the Watcher continued. "We may be in the forges, but I can teleport us out of here in a split second! We won't be around to be blown up."

"Can you hurry it up?" asked Mariel nervously.

"Twenty seconds."

"Please?" he added quietly. Privately I wondered why the others even came. We'd only needed Mimiron and myself. In the end, I decided the Watcher probably wanted them along in case something happened.

Mimiron nodded. "Right, right. Here we go." Arcane magic flashed around his hands, there was a sensation of _tugging_, and then we were -

- in the Antechamber. The other Watchers and Ellemayne were nowhere to be seen. I pulled us out into the physical realm, but they were still absent.

Katalyn pieced it together first. "They must be defending the gates."

Mimiron waved us ahead. "You go take that teleporter there," he said, pointing to a glowing blue ring on the ground. "I've got some adjustments to make on the V0-7TR-0N." Which I assumed was the giant war machine he had with him. Following his advice, we walked towards the teleporter he'd indicated. It seemed to be composed of multiple, smaller rings, one within the other, alternating steely gray and brilliant, lightning-blue, shimmers of arcane light inundating the air above it.

Jason rested a hand on my shoulders as I yawned deeply, lack of sleep catching up to me. "Ladies first," he said smugly as a gentle roar filled the air, the forges self-destructing.

I looked at him with a wry smile. "Ha ha, very funny." I stepped forward into the teleporter, and instantly I was outside in the terrace I'd first seen the Watchers in. I blinked hard. That had been... a _lot_ smoother than Mimiron's teleporting. The others followed soon after, but we were still short a giant gnome.

The three other Watchers, as well as Ellemayne and her cat, stood with their backs to us. As I watched, a swarm of doomguards, terrorguards, and even one or two succubi came down to attack them. She unleashed a volley of arrows at them, striking with deadly precision in their wings and bringing them down, where Freya made the earth shake and heave, chasms opening, swallowing the demons, and closing with stomach-churning crunches._  
><em>

"Alright," I said, making them turn around to us. "We've blown it up. What do we do now?"

"You were undetected?" Thorim asked.

"The machine that announced the self-destructing gave it away, but the demons couldn't do a damn thing to us," Katalyn interjected before I could say the same thing. I shot her a burning glare.

"Interesting," Hodir mused. "We could use a mortal with skills like those."

"For what?"

"The Legion's fel-cannons have been causing grievous damage," Freya said. "Our wall can not hold up to a sustained assault by them, and at present rates, in thirty-four hours the wall shall collapse. Nowhere near enough time for the Observer to arrive and lend us his aid. If you could sneak past, however, and disable some of the cannons, it would buy us much-needed time."

I yawned again. "Alright. I'm pretty good at going in and out of the twilight realm on my own. And that's if I'll even need to; I think I can attack the fel-cannons from inside the twilight realm. Where are they?"

My yawn didn't go unnoticed by Freya, however. "Hold. Analyzing level of deactivation chemicals in mortals." A green light engulfed me, forming a cylinder around my body. I yelped in surprise as I felt something warm invading my blood, spreading through my body. I saw similar green lights around the others. The lights faded, and the... _whatever it was_... in my body vanished. "Insufficient levels. Mortals not operating at optimal capacity," she said curiously with the hint of a smile, like she'd just caught her pet puppy digging up her back yard.

Freya continued. "Mortals have not been receiving enough time in sleep-mode, nor in the correct time frame." She turned towards Thorim. "I'll take these mortals to the Conservatory to have them render themselves unconscious. Estimated time of return: seven hours. Mortal functions improved by thirty-two percent."

Thorim nodded. "Alright, but do hurry. We can hold for that long, but our situation will become critical in twenty hours at present rates."

"Affirmative," she said, before teleporting us back to the Conservatory, then herself back to the Watchers, in the span of three seconds.

"You know," Mariel complained. "I'm getting _really_ tired of all this teleporting around."

"Would you rather walk?" Droga asked with a sneer.

"What was Freya even talking about?" I asked.

"I'm not sure," Ellemayne admitted. "But I think she wants us to sleep."

I looked around us. "On the ground?" I shrugged. "Well, I've slept on worse." I laid down and made myself comfortable, Jason laying down next to me. "Night, everyone." I closed my eyes, letting my body become heavy, giving in to restless sleep, filled with nightmares about the price of failure...

* * *

><p><span>Selriona<span>

I shook my head and groaned in pain. I shuffled through the Shrine of Goldrinn, my wounds burning. I bore several cuts and lacerations throughout my body; on my tail, my legs, my flanks. Some of my scales had been scorched black and fell off, revealing the soft, purplish flesh beneath. I was in a nasty shape, and every step I took, nausea threaten to overwhelm me. I'd already drained my mana pool dry healing myself, so shadow mends were out of the question.

Several mortals stepped back as I stumbled through, slowly leaking blood. I breathed raggedly, moving one paw in front of the other almost mechanically. By the time I was halfway through the Shrine, heading towards Hyjal, some of the mortals came running in. They had white robes about them, and I could almost _smell_ the Light around them. Healers.

"Now now," said one of them, an orc. "Can you shift to a smaller form? It'll make healing you easier."

"No," I ground out. "Got to get to the tree. Got to warn the Aspects."

"Whatever it is, we can send one of our messengers there," she said. "You're hurt, you need help."

I swiveled my head over to look down at the mortal, growling as threateningly as I could. To my surprise, she didn't even flinch in the face of a giant, pissed off dragon, which made me relent. "_Fine_," I spat, contracting to a blood elven form. Burns and cuts covered my body, and my legs felt weak and insufficient beneath me.

Right away, the orc female grabbed me by my shoulders and kept me steady. I noticed she was very careful around my clawed gauntlets. "Come on, come on. You may be having diminished returns to healing magic, but we've got some salves and herbs that can help you."

"I just need some rest," I insisted. "There are others who need it more than I." I looked around the camp, packed to bursting with mortal soldiers. More than a few of the advanced Kirin Tor mages were summoning permanent food and drink by the dozens. "They'll be retreating right behind me."

"Either way," she said as she and her peers lead me into their camp. "You need treatment. Don't want those cuts to get infected, do you?" I remained silent. "Thought so. Now, come on. Right here." She brought me into a camp, then a tent, and had me sit down on a bright blue bedroll, blue like the sky. "What's your name again? I didn't catch it."

"Selriona," I told her. "I need you to get a message to the World Tree, it's vital that the Aspects - "

"Alright, alright. I'll have someone teleport there. What's this message?"

"Kil'jaeden is coming," I said simply, making the orc pale. "Have that message reach Verthelion above all else, it is vital. He'll know what to do."

"R-right," she stammered. "I'll send the message on immediately. Here." She reached over to the side of the tent and grabbed a vial with water in it, removing the cork. "It's not water, if that's what you're thinking." Oh. "It's a disinfectant. Here, hold still." She moved towards me, but paused for a moment. "Word of caution, this _will_ sting, so please don't set me on fire."

"Alright," I said warily. "Just get on with it."

She dabbed a cloth with the sharp-smelling disinfectant and moved over my body, dabbing my cuts with it. I hissed in pain as fire seeped into my injuries, tensing and ripping the bedroll with my claws, but otherwise did nothing. In a few minutes she was done, and left me to rest in peace, alone with my thoughts. I'd barely gotten away from the most recent fight. I and several groups of mortals, backed up by the recently-arrived Kirin Tor, repelled a heavy, _heavy_ assault, complete with fel reavers, earth giants, and everything in between.

It'd been a brutal fight on the ground, and in the meantime my kind battled against the fel wyrms, aided by two gunships, the Skybreaker and the Orgrim's Hammer. Every now and then one of the two sides would get the upper hand and lay devastating strafing runs against the ground. Lava melted demons, frost made them prone to shattering. On the flip side, toxic green mist turned whole rows of our soldiers against us, a terrible thing to watch. In the end we'd won, sent the Legion and the Hammer back, but Nalestrasza had warned me of this battle, and that not long after Kil'jaeden would be coming, which was why I'd sent the call to retreat, lest he vaporize us all.

"Hey," someone said, jerking me out of my thoughts. I looked towards the flap of my pale white tent, where someone stood, blocking out the incoming afternoon light. "So, it's time?"

"Welcome to my humble abode, Verthelion," I said, leaning back, wincing as my cuts pulled against my flesh. My voice grew grim. "Yep, it's time. Nalestrasza predicts that Kil'jaeden will be coming here to break through our defenses, which is why we're retreating. He'll come with his army, but if she predicts you're strong enough to pull him into our realm. That super-strong fel wyrm will be trying to flank Nordrassil right about now - "

" - and the other Aspects and the gunships will be dealing with him," he finished, walking over to me. "You're hurt," he pointed out. Purple energy began to glow along his armored hands.

"_Don't,_" I said sharply, placing a hand on his arms. "Even think about it. You're going up against the Deceiver himself, you'll need every bit of magic you've got."

He sighed, the shine of magic fading. "Fine, fine." He looked at me again. "Want me to be honest? I'm kinda scared."

"I am too. But you fought him off once before," I said with a forced smile. "You'll do it again."

He nodded. "Right, right." Then he moved forward and wrapped his arms around me, which was strange because he'd never really gotten used to mortal customs. "Promise that if anything goes wrong, you'll get outta here."

"Only if you promise not to _let_ anything go wrong."

He chuckled. "Deal." He stood back up. "Well, see you soon."

"Kick his tail, Verthelion!" I called after my mate. Then he was gone, and I laid back against my bedroll, waiting, resting, healing. There was the sound of shifting outside, a flash of wind as my Aspect rapidly displaced air, then the deafening flaps of wings. A few minutes later, a chill ran down my spine. I knew in my heart that it was their dual, incredible explosions of shadow magic reaching all the way here. There was a singular noise as the camp suddenly went silent, and I could tell, even from so far away, it was Verthelion roaring. Immediately after was a deeper roar as Kil'jaeden entered the fight in earnest. Then there was silence.

I partially sunk into the twilight realm to hear. Roars of pain and effort filled the air as the Aspect and the Eredar Lord fought each other viciously. The air around me, even from so far, pulsated with Verthelion's twilight aura. For a while I had no way of knowing who had the upper claw, but as I focused more, I noticed something that made me grin.

Most of the roars of pain weren't Verthelion's.

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think!<strong>


	43. Chapter 43:Red Shift

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Huge thanks to dharak, my beta!**

**Chapter published 5/12/13**

* * *

><p><span>Amanthe<span>

"You want me to what?" I asked Thorim again, confused about his question, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes.

"We are running short on time to eliminate the fel-cannons assaulting our wall, before a critical breach occurs. You must destroy them, _now._ It is imperative."

"Alright," I said, craning my neck up to look in the Watcher's stormy eyes. "But where are the others?" I shifted my weight to my right foot, making said foot sink a little more into the damp soil of the Conservatory.

"Aiding in the defense. The Burning Legion has not been just assaulting our walls; they are coming in through side passages in the Halls of Stone and Halls of Lightning."

"I thought Mimiron blew up the Halls of Stone?" I inquired, cocking my head sideways.

"Rubble can be maneuvered around, pushed aside," Thorim said, frowning. "The other Watchers are defending the Halls of Lightning entrance. I shall return there as soon as I am done with you. Your mortal friends are defending the Halls of Stone entrance. Our lesser troops defend the main wall. However, their efforts will be in vain if you do not eliminate those cannons."

"Alright," I said, nodding. "I think I can handle that. Where do you want me to go when I'm done with those?"

"First, report to me. Signals along the ground shall lead you to me. After that, you shall go aid your mortal friends; again, lights along our floor shall lead you there. Understood?"

I nodded. "Yes." I hesitated. How much respect did Watchers expect from mortals? "Thank you for entrusting me with this mission, Watcher Thorim. I won't fail you."

The metal giant seemed a bit uncomfortable at that. Too much? "Alright. I shall teleport you near the wall. Titans watch over you."

I opened my mouth to tell him the same, but by then arcane light had engulfed me, and when it cleared away I was in the Conservatory no more. I stood instead in the main corridor of Ulduar, outside under the dancing, shimmering auroras and the blazing noon sun, jackets and armor on my person. All around me, iron dwarves and vrykul, brandishing weapons from axes to clubs, or some with none at all and instead being branded with magical runes, rushed around me in a veritable sea, a river of iron, the scent of metal clogging my nose. None of the blue-eyed constructs gave any sign that they knew I existed, save for going around me, headed for the ever-expanding cracks in Ulduar's wall. From beyond it, I could hear the sounds of furious fighting as the tireless defenders of Ulduar clashed with the endless demons of the Legion.

With a flick of my will, and three hundred years of practice, I instantly submerged myself into the twilight realm, the army vanishing. I walked towards the wall, slipped through a crack, and ran towards the Legion's base, as fast as my legs and magic could carry me. Red mist soon enveloped me, pulsing around me in thick rivulets as demons, formed as especially bright globs of corruption, walked around their base. I found the cannons easily; they were impossible to miss, what with the bright emerald lights shooting from them towards the wall, and that there were _several hundred of them._ Firing in sync as well, one row after the other, maintaining a constant barrage of felfire on the gates of Ulduar. The fact that the barrier still stood at all was a miracle, a testament to the abilities of the Titans.

Even so, looking over my shoulder at it, it was clearly doing poorly. Filled with cracks, scorch marks, craters, rubble around its base. I had to take these things out.

I walked up next to one. It was an intimidating thing, for certain. For starters, it was about the size of a drake. How the Legion had deployed so many so fast I had no idea, but regardless, here they were.

Each one consisted of black metal, with the 'face' of the cannon showing the roiling green flames inside, which parched my throat even within the twilight realm. The head had a mouth, eyes, and even two horns curling around its chin. The entire contraption rested on a dark green pedestal, and there were side vents that let me peer inside to see yet more felfire. Behind it was a rectangular-ish base that could only be the control panel, filled with all sorts of buttons, levers, and gauges that I had no hope of understanding.

"Alright," I said to myself. "How to do this?" If I wanted to destroy each of these by sheer force, I would never finish. But, machines were never really reliable. If I could find just the right things to remove, I had no doubt I could make the entire cannon fall apart. Problem was, there were _so_ many parts. Where the cannon met the pedestal there were countless gears, spinning so fast they were mere circles. I could've tried those, but I didn't want to risk one of them flying out at me. Which just left one thing to do...

"Flashy red button," I asked aloud, readying a finger. "What do you do?" I reached out, tapped the specific button on the console, and leaped back, shielding myself with the Holy Light, which also briefly made my movements swifter, expecting an explosion.

Instead, the cannon's flames dimmed and went out, and the front end fell down, as if the sinister machine had gone to sleep. I blinked, then pushed the red button next to the one I'd just hit.

That one made the fel-cannon's front end blow out, the metal bars forming its 'mouth' blasted outwards like peacebloom petals, the contraption giving one last dying warble to the world before falling silent. The red mist around me started to quiver as demons rushed to see why one of their cannons had gone offline.

"Alright." A smile split my face. Machines had so many features, so many ways to manipulate, but there was always that _one special_ combination that took two potentially useful functions, put them together, and caused catastrophic failure. "I can work with that."

For an indeterminate length of time I went around, disabling any fel-cannon in sight with the two-button press method. Even after so long, I was still so amazed at how much protection the twilight realm afforded me. The demons were _helpless._ But then, the twilight realm _was_ powerful. Long ago, when my friend's kind were still deceived, it let someone called Halion effortlessly infiltrate the Ruby Sanctum and cause major destruction before the Kingslayers... stopped him.

Either way, I blew up row after row of fel-cannons, watching the demonic corruption around me ripple as demonic technicians raced about, trying to see what was going on. I started to move randomly, moving into the rear of the cannon-group, then somewhere near the middle, the side, so on, so that they'd be unable to pin me down in any way. I don't know how long it took. An hour? Maybe two. But in the end, I'd destroyed all the cannons and headed back to Ulduar.

"First Thorim," I told myself, walking through the giant crack in the wall. I saw that parts of the wall were being patched up, almost like it were regenerating. Someone in the physical realm repairing it? The red fog _did_ seem to have been pushed further back, so it made sense that the Watchers would take this opportunity to fix what damage they could on it.

I reached the entrance to Ulduar's Antechamber, a flat teleportation disc on top of a colossal staircase. I pondered it for a moment. Did Thorim remember to authorize me to use the teleporter?

I tapped the metallic disc, and instantly I was inside the Antechamber. I guess he remembered. In addition, not only was I in the Antechamber, but one of the Watchers had also apparently programmed it to send me towards their defensive position.

And gods, was it a defensive position. All four Watchers were in the mechanical corridor; it was a tunnel maybe one and a half times Thorim's height, leading straight into the depths of Ulduar, towards the Halls of Lightning if I remembered correctly. The Watchers stood before a black void, inside which the luminescent, magical lights of Ulduar were nonexistent, shrouding the tunnel in absolute darkness. They stood strong, forming what looked like an impenetrable barrier.

Icy crystals grew before the Watchers, creating a barricade against the incoming demons. As I watched, some of the jagged shards flew off the barricade and down the tunnel, preceding a pained 'gurk' from somewhere down the line. Spiked vines, as thick as a dragon's leg, wound along the walls, down into the darkness. I could've sworn I saw them thrashing in there, what little light shone upon them reflecting upon their surfaces. That wasn't to say the tunnel was completely dark. Freya called down pillars of golden light from above, scorching the demons through the mountains and the metal, briefly illuminating the fight scene. Thorim channeled a huge lightning storm, which occasionally lashed out with a blinding shock, moments before the smell of charred flesh and ozone filled the air. Mimiron sat in his war machine, unleashing a barrage of purple light down the tunnel, filling it with deathly energy, revealing mounds and mounds of fallen demons, their bodies being drawn in and dissolved by Freya's plants. I got the impression that they were doing alright.

"Watcher Thorim," I said. Thorim spun around rapidly, his lightning storm fading away. The other Watchers gave no sign they were even aware of my presence. "I have eliminated the fel-cannons."

He nodded. "Watcher Freya has the temporal-spacial coordinates for your allies, she will teleport you to them. You are to stay there and hold that ground until we tell you otherwise. Enchanted nourishment will be provided for you there."

I wanted to ask how, but Freya must've been listening in, because the green, leafy glow around her hands changed to harsh arcane, and then there was something like a rope around my waist, tugging me back, and I wasn't with the Watchers anymore.

"Your welcome. Blunt as a brick," I irately muttered to myself.

I was in a tunnel, just like before, however this one was clearly not as well-kept as the one the Watchers defended. For starters, there was a massive pile of metal wreckage in front of me. There were small holes carved in the rubble, but it generally formed an impassable wall who-knows how thick. A rather effective barrier against demons, but not effective enough, judging by the various corpses and black blood just beyond the tons of twisted and shattered metal.

The others had formed a barricade behind what appeared to be a set of overturned stairs, which formed a criss-crossing wall half as tall as a dragon. Jason, Ellemayne, and Mariel were all behind the wall, peering over it. Ellemayne had an arrow ready, Mariel's hand was outstretched, while Jason seemed to be keeping one eye on each in case he had to heal; his healing ability _had_ always put mine to shame. Meanwhile, in front, Droga stood with his sword and shield ready. Directly behind him was Katalyn in her worgen form, a dagger in one hand and a vial with red liquid in the other. To her right was Fluffy, and to her left was a snorting felhound I assumed belonged to Mariel.

"I'm back," I announced to them. The ranged group turned around, raising their brows when they saw me arriving. I lifted my hands, wondering why they were staring, then noticed that my hands were covered in a layer of some black slime. "The fel cannons are history. Need any help holding them off?"

"An extra pair of hands is always helpful," Droga said, not taking his eyes off the tunnel.

"Alright everyone!" Mariel announced. "A dozen imps, three felhounds, and a wrathguard. Inbound in thirty seconds!"

"How do you know that?" I questioned him.

He tapped the side of his head. "Demon sensing," he said with a wicked smile. "Get ready!"

I nodded, sinking into my shadow form right after shielding myself. The others also prepared, pointing weapons and magic at the tunnels in the rubble. Sure enough, just like Mariel said, I soon heard the running of demons. They didn't vocalize, but their attempts at 'stealth' were utter failures. As a result, the moment I saw the group of a dozen imps appear in a tunnel, I summoned an explosion of twilight flame on them, sending them back to the Twisting Nether with ragged croaks.

The wrathguard emerged with three felhounds around it. Ellemayne loosed her arrow, but the towering demon blocked it with an axe, charging forward like a centaur. He ignored the melee fighters entirely, leaping over them and bounding to us as the felhounds engaged the front line.

Ellemayne leaped to the side with unnatural grace, dodging a one-handed axe that planted itself in the ground. I also scrambled back, weaving twilight fire with my mind and setting the wrathguard on fire, dark purple fire burning its skin, slowly charring the sickly green flesh black.

It lashed out at with me with its second axe. I leaned back just in time, watching as the weapon passed me. I saw something green glinting on the blade.

"Poisoned!" I shouted, afflicting it with a devouring plague. The shadowy disease didn't seem to be doing much against the demon, and speaking a shadowy word of pain didn't slow it down either. A shadow bolt flew past my head, hitting it square in the chest. The demon roared and stumbled back. Said movement also made Ellemayne's arrow strike a piece of armor instead of its ribs. It looked my way, and flames began to glow bright in its eyes, along its axes. I was transfixed for a moment, before realizing that something was about to happen. Ellemayne, however, realized before me.

"Move!"

I dove into the twilight realm to throw off its aim and just _ran_ away from the rubble, resurfacing after a second. When I came back to reality, I saw a wave of crackling fire spreading along the ground, moving towards where Mariel and Jason had been moments before. Jason had shielded himself and ran out of the way, whereas Mariel was now just a cluster of green ash being blown away.

Mariel stepped up next to me, making me jolt. "How did you - ?"

"Teleportation circle!" he shouted, glancing over his shoulder. Sure enough, behind him was a green ring, about half my height in diameter, sitting on the ground, the emerald runes pulsing weakly. "Lets waste him!" The wrathguard deflected another arrow, closing in on Ellemayne but failing to hit the nimble elf.

I summoned my magic into my hands, forming a pebble of twilight fire in my palm, then a rock, then a boulder, fire streaming off my fingers and adding to the twilight pyroblast's mass, before I launched it, making the wrathguard scream in pain and lose his footing. Meanwhile, Mariel had been speaking all sorts of curses at the demon, Ellemayne kept its attention, and Jason wove protections onto us.

Which was a good thing, because the wrathguard crossed the distance to me in a blur, slashing at me with its axes. Thank the Titans, Jason's barrier deflected the attack, even if it crumbled in the process; it gave me enough time to gather shadows in my throat and _scream. _The psychic scream echoed through the tunnel, washing over the wrathguard. Despite his shadow resistance, he leaped away from me before the magical jolt of fright faded from him, which gave Ellemayne enough time to launch an arrow at his forehead. The wrathguard screamed in pain as the arrow lodged partway in - not enough to kill it seemed - and a ghostly bolt of shadow magic from Mariel burned into his chest. I summoned my magic again, darkness flashing around my hands as I spoke a word of death. The raw energy from _that_ spell threatened to crush me, but as it took the life of the wrathguard, it spared me my own wrath. The demon vanished into smoke, its flame wave dissipating as the sustaining magic ran out.

The others had dealt with the felhounds, so we regrouped to let Jason heal any injuries we'd gotten; just a few scratch and bite marks on Katalyn, who lacked Droga's heavy armor.

"So how long are we here for?" I asked, noticing vines snaking up from a crack in the floor behind us, meats and vegetables on them.

"As long as the Watchers want us here," Ellemayne said, taking aim and shooting an emerging succubus's throat.

I sighed, and settled in to a long defense.

For hours, we held our ground. Demons kept coming through the rubble, slowly given the difficulty of the passing, and each time we beat them back. Sometimes they tried new strategies; shadow shields when they emerged, invisibility, none of it worked.

I eventually fell into a pattern. Shred incoming demons with a twilight explosion, focus fire them, take any incoming shadow attacks with my armor, rinse and repeat. So it went on, and on, and on. I couldn't use my typical mind flays and shadow words, not with any great effectiveness; Mariel could only do so because of his raw power, while I had to resort to twilight flame. Admittedly, while it was incredibly powerful, I felt more at ease with the shadows. We got tired, we ate the enchanted fruits Freya's network of vines delivered. I quickly lost sense of time. Fight, heal, rest, prepare. Fight, heal, rest, prepare. Fight, heal, rest, prepare, and for how long? Hours? Days?

My question was eventually answered when, after an extended period of no Legion attacks, Hodir teleported next to us.

"Come quick!" he shouted. "The gates are under heavy assault! We must protect Ulduar for two more hours for the Observer to arrive."

"Two hours? How long were we here?" Mariel asked.

"Fifty-five hours," the Watcher responded coldly. Mariel whistled. "Come with me. The Legion has sent a fel-reaver."

I paled, and in that time, Hodir teleported us to right behind the main gate of Ulduar.

The ground shook, and the air vibrated with a deafening metallic roar. I saw half a dozen plumes of smoke rising from behind the barrier, where the Legion was still trying to get in. I wobbled about a bit, rising from my shadowform. "What was _that?_" I asked.

"Fel reaver," Hodir said. "I must rejoin the Watchers in slowing down the construct. It will be up to you to destroy it."

"Why don't we slow it down and _you_ destroy it?" I asked.

Hodir didn't show the slightest indication he'd heard me, and with a flash of arcane light, he was gone. I sighed. I was _really_ starting to hate the Watchers. Ellemayne turned to us. "Alright, you heard the man. We need to get into a good angle to take out this reaver before it destroys the wall."

"And how do you propose we do _that,_ Ellemayne?" Katalyn asked.

She looked around a bit, at the slowly-cracking wall, as deafening _thuds_ shook me to my bones. "Over there!" she shouted, pointing at the side of the walls. On each side, a ramp was forming, jutting out of the wall and extending above, which would let us 'walk' over the top of Ulduar's gates. There was no doubt in my mind; Mimiron's creation. I looked up, and there were the Watchers, standing atop Ulduar's wall, massive magical energy crackling about them, channeled towards a central focus.

"How about we split up?" I asked. "There's six of us. Three on each side?"

"Sounds good," the hunter said. "Jason, Katalyn, you're with me. Amanthe, Mariel, go with Droga to the left side."

"Roger," said five voices, and we broke off into our groups, a fresh wave of iron defenders passing us and charging through the increasingly-wide cracks in the door. Droga charged before Mariel and I, sword and shield ready. We reached the top of the wall and looked down.

That was _definitely_ a fel reaver.

It was as tall as the gates, as large as an Aspect. Choking, dark green smoke poured outwards from several tubes on its back. There were two giant tubes sticking up behind its head, and two smaller ones on each 'shoulder'. Some smog also wafted out from joints in its metal plating. It shook constantly, as if something inside of it was vibrating fiercely. Vines grew around its arms, static and red mist rippled around its plates, and frost clung to the reaver's joints. As I watched, it raised its arms in slow motion, and the hands slide in, making them blunt battering rams. The fel reaver leaned over and pounded the gates with deafening thuds, twice with each arm, before pulling back. The exhaust vents on its back shook some more, and it slammed both ram-arms into the door at the same time, making a _crack_ ripple through the air. Around the gargantuan robot was a sea of demons, screeching for blood, clashing with iron defenders around the feet of the monstrously large reaver, which uncaringly began to charge up another attack.

I cast a twilight fireball into the ocean of evil. "Mariel, what did you say about killing fel reavers? Cause I think that would be good to know right about now!"

"Um, uh, the vents! Fill them or blow them up, either one!"

"Any idea how?" I heard Ellemanye shout from the other end.

"Magic? Throw rocks?" he suggested helpfully.

I stumbled as the reaver slammed the door again, the shockwave throwing me off my balance. "Works for me!" I summoned twilight fire into my hands and extended out my left palm, a fireball shooting out and finding its target, one of the smaller vents on the fel reaver's left 'shoulder'. There was a tiny, dark blue explosion, and I released another fireball, before calling down a pillar of holy fire. Mariel began to fire shadow bolts, even Droga picked up rubble from the shaking ceiling and tossed them at the vents. Whether he meant to just hit them, or clog them, I don't know, but he only succeeded with the former. On the other side, I could hear Jason smiting theirs with the Light, Ellemayne shooting magically-strengthened arrows, and Katalyn also... throwing rocks.

It took about a minute of non-stop attacking, but the first two vents, one on each side, blew up, their metal crumpling inward and clogging it up. The fel reaver groaned in pain, stopping one of its Watcher-inhibited attacks on the gate to step back. It recovered quickly, the remaining four vents spewing more smog than before, and resumed pounding at the gate.

We began taking out the next set of smaller vents, however it seemed that the Legion had started noticing what we were up to. As a result, I had to stop helping Mariel with the next vents, as did Jason to Ellemayne, and focus on both defending us from the shadowbolts and fel-fireballs streaming up, and on shooting down the few winged demons that rose up above the throng.

I focused on a rising dreadlord, and called upon the Light to smite it, but not just it; its brain directly. The demon fell back down quickly. I'd quickly learned how to take the demons out with one spell each. I had no other_ choice,_ there were so many, it made my throat tight and my heart quiver in nervous terror. In retrospect, it was a wonder I hadn't thought of that earlier.

I ducked below a fireball, and shielded Droga, who was rearing back to throw another stone, just as a rock-like cluster of darkness collided with him. I didn't quite know how Ellemayne's side was faring, but Jason had erected a hemisphere of Holy Light around them, the word of power causing a barrier that diminished most assaults and outright deflected weaker ones. I supposed there _were_ benefits to studying discipline.

A terrorguard rose up, and I focused my magic on its chest, casting. A moment later, an explosion of dark blue fire exploded outwards from it, ripping it into pieces which rained down in a shower of sickening gore.

We continued to cast, shoot down and defend, while the others kept working on the vents. I didn't have a moment to spare and help them, my entire focus was Jason and I keeping the flying demons at bay.

_Clank! Crack!_ "That's the next two!" Ellemayne shouted. The fel reaver roared in agony - could it even feel pain? - and stumbled back, shaking violently. Dark green smoke shot out of the two remaining, larger vents with intense force, creating an ongoing whoosh. The wall holding the Legion back was decimated, little more than a pile of rubble held together by ice. It would be a miracle if it withstood one more hit. It looked like a baby could knock it over...

Sadly, these last two vents were the largest ones, so logically the hardest to destroy. And the Legion was being _very_ serious about killing us now before we could destroy said vents.

To say it was frantic would be putting it mildly. Mariel and Ellemayne continued to blast and shoot the remaining smoke-hemorrhaging vents with all their might. Katalyn and Droga began to help us with the demons rising up to come after us, especially since they started to become smart and flew _around_ us. Of course, this meant that more than a few landed _next_ to us, and Droga had to fend them off while I kept thinning the herd and blocking incoming ranged attacks. I quickly lost track of how the other side was doing, focused as I was on my side. Blast, shield, dodge, sink into twilight and move around, rise, blast, shield, dodge...

It may have been two minutes. It may have been five hours. All I knew was that, at long last, the rising tide of flying demons subsided, and it seemed like the entire army was backing off. At that moment the fel reaver, after having just tried to kick down the door, lost its last two vents. First one, then the other. The fel reaver stepped back, giving off a warbled roar, resonating through the air and shaking me to my bones.

It looked down, almost as if it couldn't understand what had just happened. It held that pose for a moment, the only continuing conflict being where the armies of Ulduar met the Legion. Everything else was paused. Then everything happened so fast; the fel reaver's right arm just fell off, clanging on the ground. The left arm followed even as it stepped back with its left foot, then fell down to its knees, the green fire in its 'chest' burning brightly. Just as it was perhaps going to fall face-first onto the ground, a gout of emerald flame burst outwards from the metal grate in its chest, straight at the wall, leaving a gargantuan hole in the middle of it, punctured like a fist through wet parchment. Then the fel reaver fell apart.

It started slowly at first, a light _crackle__crackle_ in the air, that slowly built up in intensity until, with a deafening rush of noise, the battered, beaten wall of Ulduar collapsed into a pile of so much rubble. The four Watchers all fell to the ground, but seemed to take the falls effortlessly. Mimiron teleported out, to get his machine no doubt, while the other three Watchers began a frantic defense of Ulduar.

With a shrieking, wailing, haunting battle cry, the Burning Legion surged forward in an unstoppable tidal wave of death and destruction.

"That's not good!" I heard Katalyn shout over the cries of the demons. "Come one!" she shouted, looking over at us while throwing a flask down below. When it shattered, spraying its contents in all directions, a dozen and a half assorted demons fell down screaming as their skin dissolved. "We've got to help them!"

"Right" Droga and Mariel responded simultaneously. They shared a glare as they did, before Droga ran down, Mariel's felhound by his side. On the other end, I could see Fluffy also running down, with worgenized Katalyn on his tail. For a moment I wondered why Ellemayne and Mariel weren't moving, but it made sense; high ground advantage.

I began hailing twilight fireballs onto the demons below, along with Mariel's shadow bolts and corrupting spells. Ellemayne alternated between aiming a steady shot at incoming fliers, either outright killing them or grounding them, and releasing volleys of a dozen or more arrows on the demons below. Jason wove as many shields onto whoever he could; Watchers, our companions, iron dwarves, anything he could see. I myself didn't exactly aim my spells anywhere; given the density of the army, I'd have to be _trying_ to miss, and most of them just vanished into mist when they died. Some didn't, though, which confused me. Still, not important.

The Watchers, combined with Mimiron's recent return in his battle machine, were things to behold. Enormous spikes of ice erupted from the ground, impaling enemies by the dozens. The natural barriers then shattered, spearing several others. Blasts of sunlight streaked down from above, the ground shook and heaved with Freya's wrath, and little explosive seedlings routinely exploded in the enemy ranks. Lightning arced through them in ever-increasingly powerful chains, Thorim's magic backed up by iron vrykuls casting their own, less powerful versions. Mimiron's machine was especially dangerous; it spat balls of some superheated gas, blinding pulses of light from its fingertips, two rockets at a time that left smoking craters wherever they impacted. The bottom portion simply _rolled_ right over the demons, releasing explosive mines - which didn't take long to trigger - and hair-raising electric novas.

With the flashes of light given off by the Watchers, I soon found it was impossible to see the others, and resigned myself to killing as many demons as I could. Hodir said two hours. We could hold that long, right...?

Slowly but surely, however, the line of demons pressed forward, pushed by the sheer mass of the bodies behind the front line. Soon they were going to pass the ramps leading up to our location... cutting us off from the Watchers.

"Mariel, we gotta go!" I shouted at him, but otherwise not waiting for him.

"Right!" he replied, seeming to understand our situation, following after me. Across, on the other wall, Jason and Ellemayne either had the same idea or noticed us moving. Either way, just as I was about to reach the ground level, the Legion blocked us off, and a group of a dozen various types of 'guard' began to form up, no doubt preparing to push at us. "Mariel, I'll take us through the - "

"No need!" he assured me, before turning his gaze to the demons. He raised a hand to the sky, swirling with shadow magic. "Hey crazies..." he said sadistically. He stopped the spell, and a shadow descended on us. "Catch!"

The demons stopped for a moment. That was a fatal mistake, as just a second later a massive green, burning rock fell on them. The shockwave blasted me onto my bottom, my ears ringing. From the crater, the rubble began to shift and move, felflame flickering around the pieces and pulling them up, up, like the wall of Ulduar crumbling in reverse, until a towering infernal stood in the middle of the crater. It roared once, then charged at the demons, knocking them aside with gargantuan, flaming fists.

"Alright, go go go! Provide support from behind!" And with the infernal's distraction, we dashed past them, behind the line of iron defenders.

Now reunited, I got to _really_ see the Liberality Confederacy work together.

Droga and Katalyn easily kept the demons at bay. Droga was an expert, blocking attacks from seemingly all directions. His weapons were extensions of his body, his sword an overpowering arc of force and his shield an impenetrable wall around him. In his spiked armor, with his battle cries, and the ring of demonic ichor around him, I could see why the demons were singling him out over Mariel and I, and as they did Katalyn slipped behind them, dodging axes and barbed spears, pushing her daggers into demons' ribs.

Elemayne laid down an absolute carpet of arrowfire, limitless ammunition provided by her magical bow, covering her two melee allies. Sometimes she let loose sniper-shots, arcane-charged arrows splitting the head of a demon about to get a sneak attack on Droga, who Jason kept shielded, healing the small scratches and batterings Droga got.

Mariel wove together carpets of enchantments, shadow clouds buzzing around demons like carrion, ripping apart their flesh until they dissolved in a flare of shadow energy, and Droga kept both him and Ellemayne relatively safe from attackers. Of course, they had barriers of Light on them for a good reason. As did I; I had several shallow gashes along my arms, legs, one on my back, and they burned when they pulled against my flesh.

Since practically none of my offensive shadow spells were useful on the demons, I resorted entirely to twilight flame, hurling fireballs, setting demons aflame, and causing localized twilight novas. Of course, I didn't get nearly as high a kill count as the Liberality Confederacy, and I was absolutely eclipsed by the Watchers.

But despite our combined power, there were so _many. _I knew that demons normally returned to the Twisting Nether when killed, never actually dying, but were they coming back so fast? Or were there just so many demons in the Legion's army? They must've improved their portals dramatically since their last invasion; no way they could have fielded so many with the weaker teleporters I had heard stories of during the Outland campaign.

A felhound leaped at me, my barrier having vanished recently. I dispersed into darkness before it could bite my throat and flowed backwards from it, reforming with more mana than before, and while it was still trying to figure out where I'd gone, hit it with a pyroblast.

A doomguard lashed out at me with its wings. I leaped away from the talons on its wings, but then its hands glowed with shadow. Crippling pain exploded throughout my body, slowing my reaction speed and retarding my ability to weave together magic. It rushed towards me, but before it could stab me with the two daggers in its hands, each the length of my forearm, an iron-like vine erupted from the ground, speared it through the chest, and retracted back into the ground. The demon staggered and fell over dead, dropping its weapons, and the crippling pain faded.

I ran to scoop up the daggers. Better not let the Legion get their claws on these, however minor they were.

I'd never fought with melee weapons before, but I quickly discovered that, with my incredible talent flickering in and out of the twilight realm, I could put them to good use. A wrathguard charged at me, and I just sunk into the twilight realm, spun behind them, and reemerged to sink the daggers into the surprised demon's spine. I snuck through the enemy lines and eliminated an eredar warlock raining fire upon us, before heading back to relative safety behind the Watchers.

But the demons just kept _coming. _Slowly but surely, the sheer weight of the armies pushed us back, closer and closer to the teleporter. With Ulduar's forges blown up, the army ran out as we entered the main courtyard, leaving us, the Watchers, and a handful of Freya's summoned minions to hold them back, forming a ring of resistance in a sea of roaring evil.

"Fall back to the Antechamber! Trap them in the corridors!" Thorim bellowed.

No sooner said than done, and we retreated through the teleporter into the relatively narrow halls of the Antechamber. As we did, a woman's voice echoed throughout Ulduar, saying "ETA to Algalon Observer Entity's arrival: T-minus thirty minutes.".

I mentally raged. _Thirty minutes!? I can't hold out that much longer!_

The reason being that while the Watchers, being creatures of stone and metal, simply did not get tired, I was mortal, and after close to sixty hours of non-stop fighting, even with Freya's renewing magic, I was at my limits. I could tell the others were, too; Ellemayne's barrage of arrows slowed, Katalyn didn't dodge several hits and bore the cuts to prove it. Droga's knees buckled with every strike he blocked, and so on. The only saving grace was that, in the narrow corridors, and with the relatively small teleporter, the demons could only come in a few groups at a time, which Mimiron was quick to annihilate.

Even so, we were forced back, centimeter by centimeter, closer and closer to what I _assumed_ was the Celestial Planetarium.

"ETA to Algalon Observer Entity's arrival: T-minus five minutes."

"I think," I said through gasping breaths. "We're going to make it."

"Statistically, at this rate, we shall hold Ulduar long enough," Hodir said as he froze a group of felhounds solid. In response Freya released a tremor through the ground, shattering them like glass. "Even without your aid. You six are tired enough. Head to the Celestial Planetarium, it will open for you. Await Algalon's arrival, alert him of the dire situation we are in." He smashed his frozen mace into the ground, crushing a shivarra to mush, at the same time Thorim let loose a crackling arc of chain lightning.

"Right away," Ellemayne said, firing off one last volley. She spun around and turned a right. Assuming she knew the path, we followed after her.

Part of me wondered if leaving the Watchers alone to face down the invading force was a good idea. The rest of me was too tired to care.

Ellemayne came to a stop before a massive door. Near its top was a circle with four emblems in it; an azure snowflake, an emerald leaf, a yellow lightning bolt, and a rust-colored cog. As if sensing our approach, the emblems flashed, one at a time, and began to move, the circle dividing into four sections and rotating. The sections spun around, one hiding beneath another until I could only see the lightning bolt. It spun back, showing all four, and then the door slid open, vanishing into thin air as it did, revealing a chamber within.

"ETA to Algalon Observer Entity's arrival: T-minus one minute."

A bridge led out to a circular arena, which was entirely devoid of anything noteworthy. The walls rose into a cylinder around the round portion. However, the floor was transparent, making me think I was going to fall off, but as Ellemayne walked forward, it held her weight like it was stone. Of course, the fact that I could see through it into the interior of Ulduar certainly didn't _help_ things...

We stopped at the edge of the bridge. "Wait here, and above all, let _me_ do the talking, alright?" Ellemayne told us. Several acknowledgements later, she turned back around to the center of the area.

There was a blinding flash of red light, and a thunder-clap of sound. For a moment my senses were thrown off balance, making me see clouds and stars, and I couldn't feel the air around me, which felt strange because normally I _always_ did and gave it no thought. It was like all of a sudden the atmosphere had vanished, replaced with void.

The pillar of blood-colored light in the middle of the room glowed brighter, before flashing again, brighter this time, with a deafening rush of noise. My senses returned to normal.

In the middle was a towering cluster of stars floating down. It had the shape and form of a cloaked human with a ridiculously long, braided beard, but blown up to Watcher size, with the facial features erased and turned a ghostly red. He seemed to be made of stars, sprinkled inside his body, some glowing far brighter than others; one in his head, his chest, shoulders, elbows, wrists, and so on, glowing spectral lines forming a blood red, stellar skeleton within his transparent body. At his waists two giant daggers, each one slightly larger than me, hovered, patterned with the same see-through constellation he was. All around him rose tiny gems of red stars, forming in the see-through floor and rising around him in a reverse waterfall, before coming to a stop at random points around him and fading away, the end result being that he was surrounded by a halo of stars.

For a moment he hovered in the air, before placing his 'feet' on the ground. My breath caught in my throat as I looked at the blood-red being, towering above me. This had to be Algalon, Algalon the Observer.

He scanned his gaze over me, and I _knew_ that his lack of eyes did not give him any trouble in seeing. I could feel the power radiating off of him, seeping through my flesh and twisting at something, some essence of life that permeated every speck of flesh in my body. The more I stared at the constellation, the smaller I felt, the more I could see the entire cosmos laid out before me, stars forming spirals and orbs and blobs, forming groups, forming a tattered spider's web of filaments, clusters, vast voids...

"Translocation complete," came his monotone, resonating voice, making me think of things I didn't even know of. The sound of a rocky planet bursting as its ballooned star swallowed it, the pulses given off by a city-sized ball spinning far too fast. He looked down at us, focusing his intense not-gaze on Ellemayne. "Mortals. I have been called here by the Watchers of this facility. You are not the Watchers. Where are their locations?"

Ellemayne whispered, horrified, "Algalon. What... what _happened_ to you?"

For a moment, Algalon said nothing, his major stars flickering. "Mortal Ellemayne. Kaldorei. Participated in battle against myself and subsequent awakening." He hesitated... was he unsure? "It is good to see you well."

"But, you're red. What happened? You're not... corrupt... are you?" Fear strangled me, pulling me in like the gravity well of a black hole - and how did I know what that was? - and ripping me apart. Algalon, who could vaporize the planet with a single go-ahead, corrupt? Please no.

"My previous absorption wavelength was due to my function as the Herald to the Titans. After you awakened me, however, I... I could not return. Not after sentencing so many quadrillions to reorigination. My coloring redshifted as a direct result."

"What have you been doing?" she asked nervously, echoing my emotions.

"My title, observing your world. What makes you different? Is there anything at all, or were you the first I saw it in? I do not know, not anymore. I have also practiced my destructive capabilities should the need arise."

"You've been training in combat? As in, you _haven't_ before? But, you were so powerful..." She rubbed her back, to the left of her spine. A scar beneath her mail armor? A burn?

"Combat was not my Purpose. Judgement was," Algalon stated simply. "Reassessment of Purpose on my own. Your world is too precious, too rare, to be allowed to burn. No other planet has provided nearly as much resistance against the Burning Legion as yours."

_Flattering,_ I thought. _Is he going to kill us?_

"However," the Observer continued. "I must reassert my inquiry; where are the Watchers located?"

"They are holding off the Burning Legion in the antechamber," she said. "They sent us away because we were apparently getting too tired."

The constellation nodded. "Wise decision. Mortal exhaustion severely hampers combat capabilities." He looked around, and for a moment his gaze locked on me as he did. I had another vision then, of Azeroth's two moons slowly receding, the sun glowing brighter and brighter, filling the skies with vaporized-ocean clouds. The clouds turned sulfuric yellow, then were blown away by a giant red sun, which continued to grow, closer and closer to Azeroth, until the red giant took up the entire sky. Then it vanished, almost instantly, leaving behind a multicolored halo strewn throughout the sky, centered on a dense white core, Azeroth dead and gray. Time continued to pass, and the burning cinder turned black and vanished, the stars winked out one by one...

"However, much has passed in the three hundred Azerothian years since we have last encountered each other, and I must admit I was not witness to them all." He looked my way again, and I could've sworn he _saw_ my connection to Selriona, my loyalty to my Flight. "I will go aid the Watchers and repel the assault. Then, we have much to speak of."

And with that, the Observer strode past us, his starry body passing through Mariel and Droga like mist, and he turned the hall.

We rushed after the Observer, for he was undoubtedly our only hope.

If there was anybody on Azeroth, anybody at all who knew how to kill Sargeras.

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><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think!<strong>


	44. Chapter 44:Wasted Time

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Massive thanks to my beta, dharak!**

**Chapter published 5/21/13**

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><p><span>Amanthe<span>

The ease with which Algalon halted the invasion was frightening.

We ran after him, of course, as fast as our tired legs could carry us. We weren't just going to _let_ the Observer get himself killed. In the time we had introduced Algalon to Ulduar, the Watchers had been pushed back to the hallway leading directly to the Celestial Planetarium, so we didn't have to go long.

The moment Algalon saw the hordes of demons, his stars flashed once. Then something reddish-orange _slammed_ through the ceiling of Ulduar, smashed into the middle of the army and sent dissolving, scorched bodies flying, a rush of hot air washing over me.

The Watchers stepped aside as Algalon waded into the throng of demons still recovering from the cosmic smash.

He raised his arms, daggers ready, and faster than I could blink he'd slashed them in a wide arc, leaving a dozen demons slice neatly in half. I could practically see a purplish arc in front of him, lingering a few seconds after the strike. He raised his arms again, setting his sights on a doomguard, and once again, faster than I could blink, his right hand shot out and back in, leaving a smoking hole in the now-dissolving demon's chest. Another set of quick slashes later, and the chamber was cleared of demons. Just like that.

Algalon stopped for a moment, his stars flashing. Then the stars rising around him split off, forming structures of their own, complex latices brimming with arcane energy. He sent the five blood red living constellations down the corridor, where they met another group of demons. They each released a spiraling barrage of arcane power, and when the missiles hit their targets they exploded with blinding arcane explosions. The demons were ash.

The Observer turned around to face the Watchers, voice emotionless. "They will buy us sufficient time." He turned to look at Thorim specifically. "Watcher Thorim, report on the status of the Ulduar Complex."

"Status is critical," he boomed. "Sargeras, possessing an iron vrykul, is arriving in mere hours, intending to use the mechanisms to reconstruct his natural form and possess it. We have, however, sabotaged Ulduar and destroyed its forges. It will take him years to repair them, and with what our mortal allies tell us of the ferocity of the war elsewhere, it will be over far before then." He frowned. "We request your aid, in both arms and knowledge, to defeat Sargeras. He is... very powerful, even in a limited form."

Another series of arcane explosions from the side, charging the air with the magic's unnatural smell.

Algalon responded to Thorim, the other Watchers watching with mechanical interest, like time had suddenly stopped for them. "Of course, I shall lend my aid. This world is too unique to lose to destruction, and the Pantheon's primary enemy, primary enemy to all sentient life forms, is severely weakened. Optimal opportunity to end Sargeras."

I didn't like where this conversation was headed. It was all too similar to the fears Selriona and I had outlined about Algalon. The fact that he didn't seem particularly inclined to set the skies aflame was a plus, but I didn't like the emotionless, purely factual manner in which he spoke. But what could I say? Visions of the cosmos filled my eyes, of blazing blue suns - like that of Argus and Xoroth - expanding and reddening before exploding with the heat of a thousand suns, stifling my tongue.

"However, you say Sargeras is inbound now. That means this position can not be held."

"Can't you fight him?" Ellemayne asked. "You've been training for, what? Thirty decades? You've got to at least stand a chance."

He slowly shook his head. "Calculations of the Pantheon's former champion shows such actions would end poorly. Even embedded into a weaker shell, such actions would result in rapid termination on our part. He must be additionally weakened first." He waved that idea away, a surprisingly _mortal_ gesture. "We can speak of such things elsewhere." He turned his celestial gaze on me, making me see a patterned sky of stars, the constellations shifting and distorting as they rotated within the galaxy... "Mortals. You know better than us of what has transpired on this world. Inform us now, before we are forced to evacuate Ulduar."

That made a chill run down my spine._ Evacuate_. The way he said it made it sound like we were living in a condemned building, and the local government wanted us out for our own safety. A far cry from the reality of the situation, which was that we were trapped in a city halfway across the world from where said world may be _ending_, with an unstoppable force of pure destruction mere hours away.

Regardless of how that made me feel, Ellemayne began to talk, speaking of what had happened ever since they beat his brains in last time they met. I learned a few things myself about the Kingslayers; how they had gone to some sort of tournament in order to gear up for Icecrown, the subsequent overthrowing of a wicked king. The call for help from the Dragonqueen, their many ventures throughout the Cataclysm, making me wince each time they mentioned my Flight._  
><em>

Here Algalon interrupted her as she finished recounting the aftermath of Deathwing's insanity. "That is the source of the new subspecies of dragons I have been observing, then. I have wondered."

After that, she continued, going through the relatively uninteresting events of the past three centuries. Here and there I corrected her on some political thing, where her memory may have slipped. Before too long, with the stench of arcane magic permeating the air, Ellemayne finished up the narrative of all that had happened on Azeroth, including the present status of the war.

Algalon pondered this for a few moments, motionless. "I see. This presents a most interesting method of defeating Sargeras. Yes, yes I believe I have formed an idea." He looked back at us. "But for now, we must leave this place, and go to Hyjal. I must speak with your leaders."

"Now?" Mimiron sputtered through some sort of speaking machine in his vehicle, his voice coming out a bit distorted.

"Affirmative, Watcher Mimiron," the constellation said. "There is no more purpose to being in Ulduar. It is lost. When Sargeras discovers he can use nothing here, he will no doubt set his sights on Hyjal itself; the clock is still ticking." _And the clock ticks slower in a gravitational well, but only when someone outside looks down. To the slowed, the world speeds up while they remain normal. Normally, it's impossible to notice this, it's too weak, but if you fall towards a black hole or similarly dense object..._

I shoved the foreign knowledge out of my mind, rubbing my temples through my scale armor.

"We are leaving now," Algalon insisted, both his major and minor stars flaring, rusty arcane orbs forming in his hands as his daggers suddenly teleported to his waist. There was a crack of air, a supernova flash of energy, and then everything _bent._ It was as if I was travelling through a tunnel, kilometers and kilometers of distance compressed into mere steps, the colors of the terrain blending into each other. Just as suddenly as it started, it ended, reality unfolding into its normal configuration.

I stumbled once, the ground under my feet going from smooth to uneven. The smell of the air around me changed, warming up and filling my nose with the natural smells of nature, with just a _subtle_ undertone of magical power. Instead of a vast city complex, I was in a bowl-shaped field, with forests dotting its outskirts, centered on a behemoth of a tree, around which stretched a field of grass. On said field were multiple buildings, masses of color moving in them, no doubt the army. The area I stood in was right before the 'ring' of forestry, some of which gently smoldered in the distance, plumes of smoke and steam rising into the air, mixing seamlessly with the overcast sky.

"We have arrived. The Watchers are to follow with me. As is your guild, Ellemayne. I assume the Dragon Aspects will be in charge?"

She nodded. "The leaders of the other armies are here, or at least their representatives, but the Aspects are in charge for obvious reasons." She turned to look at Jason and I, and I knew what was coming. "Um, you two go... look for your patron. Yeah, look for Amanthe's patron. She's the Prime Consort to Verthelion, right? She needs to know." I tried to get angry, but her forest-green gaze told more than her words; it was nothing personal, but in a meeting between the Dragon Aspects, the Watchers of Ulduar, what was left of the Kingslayers, and the leaders of nearly ever major faction on Azeroth, we truly didn't belong.

"Right," Jason said glumly, turning to hold my hand, even as the others started towards Nordrassil, the mortals struggling to keep up with the pace of the giants beside them. "Lets go then."

"Right. I'll ask Selriona where she is." I did just that, and got her response after a moment.

_'The Shrine of Goldrinn, why?'_

_'Because we're coming to you.'_

_'Wait, you're back?'_

_'Yeah, yeah we are.'_

_'What about - '_

_'Algalon doesn't look like he's gonna have us vaporized. The Watchers have self-destructed Ulduar, so Sargeras can't use it. Now they _and_ Algalon are here to help us out. They and the Liberality Confederacy are going to talk with the Aspects right now.'_

_'That's actually... pretty good! I never even dreamed they'd be so... cooperative.'_

_'Algalon said that the Kingslayers performed some sort of 'awakening' on him, and he's defected from the Titans to watch Azeroth.'_

_'Hmm, maybe they actually gave him a heart?'_

_'Maybe. I mean, he's a bit... mechanical, but not as much as some of the other Watchers. Anyway, I'll talk to you more when I've reached you.'_

_'Alright, see you here. I'm injured right now, so I won't be going anywhere. Look for my human form.'_

_'Gotcha.'_

I returned to the real world. Sometime during that conversation, the two of us had started towards a passageway in the 'bowl' surrounding the World Tree. We continued to walk in silence, past the guards that took one look at us, had a priest engulf us in a flash of Light, and then did nothing. Once we were getting closer to the Shrine of Goldrinn, which took a few thirsty hours, Jason broke the tense silence.

"You know, we're gonna have to split off."

I looked at him confusedly. "Huh?"

He put his head in his hands, squeezing his different-colored eyes shut. "Amanthe, you're part of the Twilight Dragonflight, but I'm still a member of the Alliance. I have to go help their healers."

Understanding crashed down around me. "Oh," I deadpanned. "_Oh._"

"Yeah. Listen, Amanthe, you know it's a war - "

"And in war, people die," I mused sadly. "But you're gonna be healing the injured, not fighting on the front lines."

"But you will," he said matter-of-factly. "Alright? So just be careful, alright?"

Heat rushed to my face at his concern. "Alright, thanks. You be careful too, okay? The Legion has zero honor; they're just as liable to send pit lords after the army as to rain down infernals on the injured."

"Alright." We walked out of the narrow mountain pass that led to the Shrine of Goldrinn, the setting sun glowing red through the clouds. With how peaceful said passage was, you would never believe that the world was about to end. Soon, we arrived into the main Shrine.

To the right, a stone path lead to the marble statue of a majestic wolf mid-prowl, thick bushes growing behind it, with several stone pillars lining the path. To the left there laid a shimmering lake, with one tiny island in its middle, waves lapping it where the waterfall feeding the lake spilled.

Everything else was a giant camp, and I saw for the first time just how poorly the battle was going.

The exit to the Shrine of Goldrinn was a narrow pass, which was fortified with an absolute pile of spikes, traps, and soldiers, though the latter I couldn't make out from my distance. However, the pass beyond was charred black, and looking closely I could see more black marks within the shrine itself.

Most of the Shrine of Goldrinn was a camp for the wounded, it seemed. Countless tents formed up on a slight plateau, and there was no doubt in my mind that the injured were among them.

We approached, convincing several justifiably jumpy soldiers that we were allies. On the outskirts of the camp, Jason and I turned to face each other one last time.

"Go to Selriona, I'll go find the Alliance leader here. Stay safe, Amanthe. Light watch over you."

"Titans protect you, Jason." We both leaned in for a quick kiss, and then went our separate ways.

It was quite easy to find Selriona, considering I could just _ask_ where she was. But the atmosphere of the camp was just _depressing._ I knew it couldn't be the main army; reasonably crowded as it was, there were far too few people, and crowding anymore would easily result in jumping plagues. And there were no dragons. The healers I saw walking about were slouched, as if weighed down by the bags under their eyes. The stench of medicine and blood filled the air. I could hear far too many groans of pain. Far too many cries.

I soon found the white tent Selriona was in, and the troll healer there stood aside wordlessly. Had Selriona told her I was coming?

I stepped in and whistled. The area was quite small, with no distinguishing features to really speak of. A white cloth blanketed the ground, and there was a teal bedroll near the back, covered with several small incisions that revealed the white fabric beneath. It was that on which the twilight dragon laid on her back, her clawed hands gently tapping it and opening more holes. But that wasn't what made me whistle.

"You look like _shit_," I said, making her turn over onto a side to look at me with an expression that echoed being bored out of her mind.

Selriona rolled her purple eyes, which looked like they were going to sink into her skull the shadows around them were so deep. "Thank you, Amanthe," she said snidely. Being a twilight dragon, her mortal form's skin was always naturally pale, but this took the cake; it was like she was made of snow. The purplish metal on her hands looked tarnished, and there were several wide cuts along her arms, legs, dangerously close to her neck, that, while no longer bleeding, were still nasty to look at. All in all, it was like I was looking at a corpse.

I walked over to her side and sat down. She pulled herself up into a similar position, wincing with every movement she made.

"Are you alright enough to be sitting up?"

"I'm fine," she insisted sharply. "So, what's Algalon's plan? Weren't you with him?"

I sighed. "Apparently, Jason and I aren't important enough to listen to the plan he's going to tell the Aspects."

She grimaced, and decided not to respond to that. "You're hurt," she mentioned instead, gesturing with a gauntlet to the cuts and bruises I'd accumulated during my stay in Ulduar.

I snorted. "Look who's talking! Titans, what exactly happened?"

"Pre-Kil'jaeden assault," she said simply. "Verthelion killed him, though." My jaw sagged. "Well don't look so surprised! He's been training for that ever since their first fight,_ and_ he's got armor, _and_ he's got the twilight realm to isolate Kil'jaeden from his minions, _and_ none of that eredar's shadow spells really -do- anything to Verthelion."

"Where is he now?" I asked.

"At the World Tree, resting and being healed by the Green Flight. Gonna guess he's talking with Algalon and the Watchers now. What_ were_ the Watchers like, anyway? I've only heard stories of them."

"Well," I said, rubbing the back of my neck. "Freya and Hodir were pretty emotionless. Thorim was a bit... warmer, I guess. Mimiron, though, gods! He's like the mechanical version of Mariel."

Selriona froze. She slowly raised her eyes to mine, locking gazes with me. Her mouth operated functionlessly for a few seconds, opening and closing like a fish out of water, before she finally found her voice. "Mariel?" she asked faintly, as if I'd just said that she was going to die in a few minutes at the young age of three hundred.

"Yeah, why? You know him?"

She took a shuddering breath, looking down, muttering beneath her breath in Draconic. I could barely make out the words. "Titans... I nearly forgot... I thought I'd have more time... it can't be yet..." Suddenly, she snapped her head up. "Amanthe, who else was left of the Liberality Confederacy?"

A bit unnerved by her sudden fear, I was a bit slow to answer. "Well, as the oldest surviving member, Ellemayne's kinda taken charge. I already told you about Mariel, then there's an orc warrior, Droga, and a worgen rogue, Katalyn," I said, sneering at the last name. With each person I mentioned, Selriona flexed her claws, eyes darting about. Dragons didn't _get_ old, but in that moment she seemed to rapidly age. "Selriona, what's wrong? You look like someone died." I winced as it came out of my mouth. Of course someone had died. This was a war.

"No!" she snapped. "Or, well, yes! But that's not the point. Oh Titans, is it really so soon? It barely even felt like three decades. So soon..." She shook herself out of her reverie. "It doesn't matter yet!" She looked back at me as I sat down next to her right. "I really hope Algalon's got a plan to kill Sargeras."

"How bad is it here?" I asked, nudging the subject, eager to steer the discussion away from _whatever_ the hells had spooked her like that.

"Really bad," she said. "Casualties, wounded and dead, are really high. Our Flight is running raids on the Legion and the Cult's base, but they don't seem to be _doing_ much. Titans know how, but that fel-wyrm is kicking the crap out of the Aspects, so they can't do much to help. And despite the Blue Flight's banishing crystals, there are still so _many_ demons, and they do nothing to stop the Old God from summoning more of the faceless. Not to mention that whoever that Old God is is _whispering_ to our Flight, just us in particular."

"Are you okay?" I asked, suddenly alarmed.

"Oh, I'm fine." She raised her right hand to her head. "Nalestrasza's blocking him, just like she did last time." She lowered the hands. "But... Verthelion's not well."

I reached out and placed my left hand on her clawed right. "Oh _no._"

"And it's not just him, everyone else is hearing him. I mean, we all know to ignore him, to talk with someone we trust about the whispers, but I'm still... still worried."

"That someone may betray us?"

She laughed nervously. "Yeah. Though, maybe we won't have to worry about that too much, thanks to the fel wyrms."

"What about the fel wyrms?"

She turned to look at me, but for some reason she couldn't seem to look at my eyes. "Some of them kept their breaths from their past lives. Some former reds breathe fire, some former bronzes sand. A deceased twilight nearly _killed_ my mother with our flames. But most of them just breathe this fel... _mist. _It's mind control mist, instantly changes those caught to the side of the Legion. And if that weren't enough, they're always leaking those fumes, wearing away at your will to fight. Doesn't help that when _that_ fel wyrm comes he raises our dead as more of his own army."

"So what does that have to do with the Old God?"

"At least those who may end up betraying us are forced into it ahead of time," she said dimly. Then she grimaced. "That's a horrible thought."

I took my hand off hers. "So, what are we doing now? Where are we going?"

"Me? I'm not going anywhere for a while. You though, you should talk to General Vajarn. He's gotten most of Nalestrasza's plans memorized - how I will never understand - and he's pretty much the foremost tactician. Things would be... a lot worse without his help." She sucked in a sudden breath, dropping her voie. "So that's how Rom knew him... Mariel told him..."

"Guess you're having trouble with the fel wyrms?" I asked, breaking her out of her whatever-it-was musing. I could ask her about that when and if we won this damnable war. If it could even be called that; it was going very fast.

"That's putting it mildly. But it's not just the fel wyrms. Despite our best efforts we keep getting pushed back. The Kirin Tor is so busy summoning enough food and water to feed the army, the Legion's air forces almost match ours and the mortals'. And we're busy evacuating the wounded here to the World Tree, since _noone_ predicts we're gonna hold the Shrine of Goldrinn for _too_ too long. On top of everything else, morale is so low, Amanthe. Everyone's scared of the next fight."

Suddenly, I found myself kind of wishing I was still in Ulduar. Even though it was probably a smoking crater by now.

She snapped her head to me, expression turning perplexed. "There's also this tauren, a member of the Cult. She controls fire, she's really quick, too. She's been causing us a lot of trouble; she shows up, burns a few people to a crisp, and vanishes again. _I _don't know her, but Nalestrasza says you met her in Orgrimmar, on your first mission." A pulling began in the back of my head, as if I knew what was coming. "Says her name is Saltio."

I froze up. That name was so _familiar._ I began to try and recall her. Saltio, Saltio. Memories flashed behind my eyes, inside my ears. A tauren, married to a guard, three hundred long years ago. Taken in by the Cult, corrupted despite my best efforts back then. Imprisoned for her own good. Escaped, partially ascended with a fire elemental. A fight with her that ended with me nearly killed and her escaped.

"Oh, her," I said, descending into a slouch. "Yeah, almost forgot about her. Strange to think she's still around; I mean, she ran away from the fight with me, but I always figured she died in the rest of the fighting."

"Care to explain _who_ she is?" Selriona asked. "I mean, I don't remember a thing about her, that's all Nalestrasza."

I nodded. "She was in Orgrimmar when I was, my neighbor actually. She went to the Twilight's Hammer, as near as I can tell she was just _curious, _didn't know what they really did. Must've lived under a rock to not know that after the Cataclysm, maybe she moved there from Mulgor?"

"Mulgor _was_ pretty unaffected by the Cataclysm," Selriona confirmed._  
><em>

"Right, so. She got corrupted, of course." My fists clenched. "I tried to save her, but in the end I had to turn her in to the guard. During the Cult's attack, she escaped prison and hunted me down. She'd bonded with a fire elemental."

"She's _ascended?_" she shouted in panic. "Those things are bad enough as it is, without them getting three hundred years of practice!"

"Half ascended," I told her. "She said she was only halfway ascended, apparently she didn't eat the right food before? I dunno. But... I guess she's been busy."

"Hmm," she snorted. "Well, go find Vajarn, he should be near the statue of Goldrinn. He already knows where you need to go for the next battle."

"Alright," I said, standing up as Selriona laid down. "Sweet dreams."

The sound of snoring instantly met my ears.

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><p><span>Sargeras<span>

This body was made of metal.

As such, it overcame many of the weaknesses that afflicted flesh. It did not grow tired. It did not need to excrete waste or take in food, or water. It did not need to sleep, did not need to breathe.

So _why_ was I panting and gasping for breath?

I shakily planted one foot in front of the other, passing through Ulduar, each step melting a portion of the ice and making it steam around me. Cold winds whipped around me violently, piercing through my fire shell and chilling me to my core, my metal skin cracking and groaning. As I passed through the smoking, battered buildings of Ulduar, my loyal army knelt and made way for me.

I'd severely underestimated just how _cold_ it was up here. It had already been frigid in Dragonblight, even more so when I encountered that speedbump lower in the mountains. But as I neared Ulduar it _rapidly_ grew colder and colder, like the planet's atmosphere itself conspired against me, and it took me _far_ too long to reach the Titan city.

Thankfully though, I soon reached the warmer inside of the Halls of Stone, and found the commander I'd placed in charge of the Ulduar invasion. After allowing a few groans of pain to betray me, I welding the cracks back together, and walked up to Talgath.

The red-skinned eredar stood before a massive pile of rubble, where various underlings were busy making paths. He noticed my approach and whirled around, sinking to his knees. "Lord Sargeras," he rumbled. "I fear I have unfortunate news."

The malicious darkness in my eyes flickered, darkening the entire chamber we were in. Unfortunate... news? After my right hand's utter failure in Hyjal, Talgath, who said failure had appointed in hunting down the draenei in ages past, had another failure? "You've... _w__hat?_" I growled, the floor around me flexing like water under my telekinetic power.

"The Watchers activated Ulduar's self destruct mechanism. There's nothing left," he said, eyes trained on the floor from where he knelt.

He gave out a strangled gurk and floated into the air, shadowy ropes tied around his body, extending from my outstretched left palm. "You mean to say," I began. "That the Watchers, who I know for a fact have been programmed to not allow harm to befall Ulduar, have actually _self destructed_ the very thing - no, the _only_ thing, we came here to recover? And that all this was a waste of time, when I instead could have been _RIPPING THE WORLD TREE FROM ITS ROOTS?_" I tightened the shadow ropes. "Think about your next words very... _very_ carefully, Talgath. This will be your only chance to explain. Be thankful you have that much; I find myself short on commanders recently." I let him go, and he dropped back to a kneeling position.

After a few gasps, he spoke. "Three days ago, a group of six mortals arrived here and began aiding the Watchers in their defense. It is our belief that they employed the use of paradox to persuade the Watchers to perform such. There is no more resistance, but much of the forges have been reduced to rubble."

I growled in fury, my vision sparking, felflame and darkness coiling around my muscles. I planted Gorribal into the ground, causing a spiderweb of red cracks in the metal floor. Thick balls of shadowflame formed in my fists, the fabric of reality began to twist...

I relaxed my power and picked Gorribal back up. This was not the time for punishment. This was not the time to make an example. Even after all we'd prepared, Azeroth was still holding us off well. This wasn't the time to be a ruler, this was the time to be a _commander._

"Anything _else_ to report?" I ground out.

"The Watchers teleported to safety. They also summoned Algalon the Observer to aid them. All, including the mortals, are gone."

I laughed. "The _Observer?_ He knows nothing about combat! All he knows is how to spot corruption! That was a grave error on their part." I began to ponder. "These mortals... what do you know of them?" Talgath gave a quick layout as to the various races that had aided the Watchers. "Hmm... must've been those mortal 'Kingslayers'," I mused. "So that's where they went."

"You encountered the Kingslayers?" Talgath asked, surprised, getting the nerve to stand up.

I waved my left hand, since my right one still held Gorribal in a deathgrip. "They attempted to stop me en route to here. Had the blessings of what I _assume_ are the Aspects. Didn't slow me down much." I pondered for a moment. "Evidently, this enterprise has been a waste of time. No matter. Give me a moment to check in with the rest of my generals." I fixed Talgath with a glare. "Perchance they have had more success than you."

_'Mephistroth, what is the progress of your sieges?'_

_'Excellent, my Lord. Bilgewater Harbor and the Darkspear Isle have just fallen, and Stormwind and Orgrimmar are both suffering thanks to the few fel wyrms Ialion has sent us. The Undercity is holding firm, thanks to it being underground, but we are slowly collapsing the overlying earth into it. I assume you want me to send the forces freed up to the Hyjal offensive?"_

_'Affirmative, Mephistroth. Sustain the sieges on the other locations. They _are_ still evacuating soldiers, yes?'_

_'Of course, my Lord. Slowly, however, thanks to our orbital bombardments.'_

_'Good.' _I switched the target of my telepathy to the second in command of Hyjal's ground invasion. _'Detheroc,__'_ I told the dreadlord. _'What is the estimated time of Hyjal's collapse?'__  
><em>

_'Approximately a week. The defenders have smartened; it's like they have their own satellites floating above their world, but that's not the case. It's... curious. Almost as if they can predict when and where we'll strike. Regardless, their forces are being battered, and the Shrine of Goldrinn will not hold long. After that it's the Circle of Cinders, or _whatever_ they're calling it now, and then a simple long-range bombardment of the World Tree.'_

_'Keep up the assault. I myself will be coming to aid you, and Mephistroth will be sending you soldiers of his own soon.'_

_'Thank you, my Lord.'_

I changed people again. _'Ialion, report on the status of the enemy's air forces.'_

_'It... could be better,' _he said, sounding abashed. _'I'm coordinating with Detheroc, but it simply stands that there are a _lot_ of dragons defending Hyjal, not to mention a dozen or so mortal gunships, and gryphon/wyvern riders.'_

_'How many Aspects have you slain?'_

_'Not one, sadly. They've armored themselves, and have certainly been training. Not as much as I, and not for the sole purpose of killing them, but they're not as clumsy in battle as we believed. Of course, I'm keeping them occupied.'_

_'Not well enough if Kil'jaeden is dead,'_ I snarled. _'Get your act together before I come there and get it together _for_ you.'_

_'Apologies, my Lord. It shall be done.'_

_'Ensure that it is. Tsa'thannon!'_

_'What?'_

_'Oh don't be so snide with me. Anything to report?'_

_'Well, not much. I'm whispering to the traitors, but it's not wearing them down fast enough. Almost out of cultists, too. Pardon, I should correct myself. My whispers aren't wearing down _most_ of them fast enough. The traitors' leader, the Aspect... he suffers.'_

_'Excellent. Keep it up.'_

_'What about your Ulduar plan?'_

_'Utter failure. The Watchers had enough intelligence to sabotage their own forges; there is nothing for us here besides a waste of time. I am enroute to the World Tree now. If I can not get into my true form, then _you_ can be freed.'_

_'No rush,' _he assured me, before cutting the telepathy.

I walked around, pondering this, and contacted Ialion again, the minions around me respectfully staying silent. _'Ialion, send one of your fel wyrms to Ulduar. My scepter is not yet recharged, so I need transportation over to Hyjal.'_

_'Apologies my Lord, but would it not be faster to take a transporter?'_

_'Our transporters are one-way, it's a sacrifice the gan'arg had to made to make them easy to set up. Can't build one here to Argus, either, they can't fight the winds.'_

_'Understood, my Lord.' _There was a moment of silence. _'I have sent Rsemra to you. She'll be landing just outside the Halls of Lightning.'_

_'Good.'_ I cut off the link with him as well. Without another word, I turned around and walked out of the Halls of Stone. I halted and looked over my shoulder to Talgath. "Ready your forces, we're going to Hyjal."

Maybe _I _couldn't take the fast route, but fallen demons come back to life on Argus, and we had many,_ many_ portals to Hyjal there.

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><p><strong>Please review, let me know what you think! It means a lot.<strong>


	45. Chapter 45:Burning Bright

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Massive thanks to my beta, dharak!**

**... this is, as of date, officially my longest story.**

**Chapter published 5/30/13**

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><p><span>Amanthe<span>

My brain was _fried._

I hadn't been in Hyjal for three hours before being worked like a dog. Vajarn had arranged to have me teleported back to the World Tree to help heal injured dragons. It was all too depressing, trying to mend the injured dragons with my pitiful healing magics. After I'd quite literally passed out trying to heal a blue female seared by the caustic poison of a fallen green, I woke up in the Shrine of Goldrinn again, in a tent. I got up, left the tent, and began to hunt down the nearest source of water because I felt like I was _dying._

I found a mage from the Kirin Tor standing in the middle of a 'junction' in the camp; that is, where four paths leading through collided. He stood on a small box; it was an overturned crate. Around his hands flickered arcane magic, filling the air with crackling power before he stopped casting and placed a newly conjured biscuit with the other surrounding his box. Instead of going for the food, I got in line. After what felt like hours but in reality was probably only minutes, I got my ration of food and water. I found a place to sit on the ground, near the end of the camp, and began to eat and drink.

_'You feeling better?' _I asked.

_'Yeah, a bit.'_

_'Where are you?'_

_'Well, I sorta _convinced_ my warde - _I mean,_ my healer to let me go early. I'm helping Verthelion.'_

_'Injuries or insanities?'_

_'Both,'_ she replied glumly. _'He's been taking it hard. The Old God is saying we were hoping he died to Kil'jaeden, that I let myself get hurt to distract him.'_

_'And he believes that?!' _I asked, shocked at the apparent stupidity of the Aspect. I mean, I know I should respect him, Aspect and all, but that was so clearly bullshit!

_'No, but repetition is the key to persuasion.'_ she said, alleviating my fears as to Verthelion's intelligence. _'So, where are you going? I mean, for the next battle?'_

_'Well, apparently while the Legion's going to try to place down troops on Aviana's shrine via fel wyrm so they can attack Goldrinn's shrine from the south. At the same time they attack it directly from the west. _More fel wyrms will be coming from the north at the same time; Aspects are gonna be needed for the northern group_.'_

_'Three pronged attack,'_ Selriona mused. _'That sucks. So, where are you gonna be?'_

_'Vajarn wants me helping Aviana's shrine, keep them from attacking us from behind.' _I paused for a moment. _'I still can't believe Nalestrasza _calculated_ all that.'_

She chuckled nervously at that. _'Yeah, well. She did, and she's been right the past couple assaults. So it's safe to trust her.'_

_'I guess. So, you going anywhere anytime soon?'_

_'I'm gonna be busy with the evacuation once I've helped Verthelion.' _I recalled the steadily decreasing number of tents and wounded in the Shrine of Goldrinn. _'Then, if I recover in time, I'll help the ground fight again.'_

_'Why weren't they evacuated to the World Tree in the first place?' _I asked.

_'Not enough time,' _she said simply. Then, her voice took on a tone of hesitation. _'How... how are you?'__  
><em>

_'You mean beside the world-tearing war, imminent end-of-all-life, stress from those, and the various injuries I've accumulated? Pretty good, and you?'_

_'I'm... I'm great. Thanks. Listen, Amanthe, after we win this war - '_

_'If, don't get overconfident.'_

She sounded skeptical of that. _'Um, right. If. After we win this war, you can do whatever you want.'_

Even though she couldn't see, I raised an eyebrow, taking another long sip of my water to replenish my mana pool. _'What do you mean by that?'_

She sounded strangely reluctant to say what she said next. _'If you want to go live with your mate, you can. If you want to help rebuild what's damaged, you can. If you want to accompany me to wherever I go, you can. You can do whatever you want,' _she said, her telepathic voice dropping to a whisper at the last sentence.

This sort of worried me. _'You're speaking like I'm about to_ die._ And besides, what would I possibly do? I've lived such a long life, I don't even know _what_ I would do.'_

_'It's only been - '_

_' - three hundred years, I know.'_ I finished my rations of tasteless mana biscuits. _'Maybe not that long for you, but for me... it feels like I have the world on my shoulders. Truth be told, I'm not exactly that worried about dying. I mean, I won't just lie down. I need to help for this war, not to mention how you and Jason would take it. But for my own sake, I'm not that worried. I've been living on borrowed time for two centuries, time borrowed from_ you_._'

Silence. And then quietly, _'You... you'd better head over to Aviana's shrine. Attack's probably soon.'_

_'Got it. Are you okay? You sound worried.'_

_'I'm fine!' _she insisted. Deciding to let sleeping dogs lie, I finished off my rations and got to my feet, heading out of the camp towards Aviana's shrine.

Trees dotted the landscape. There was a particularly large one, its branches fanning out above in a sheet, almost as tall as Nordrassil. Built into the tree's trunk was the telltale architecture of the night elves, some of the wood carved into bears or wolves. The wind didn't blow, and no birds tweeted or cawed in the surrounding forest, giving the whole area a sense of deathly melancholy that made me want to curl into a dark corner. Dew clung to the grass and refracted the sun's rays through the overcast skies, creating a dim rainbow to reach my eyes. It was stupidly warm, which was strange because elsewhere it was a tad chilly, and I could practically _feel_ bubbles of warm air rising around me.

Along the grass sat dozens of drakes and dragons of all colors, waiting. As I approached, I noticed one twilight drake rise off the ground and bound over to me. Like all twilight drakes, his scales were dark blue, along with his wings, and they seemed to absorb the rainbow colored light from the dew. He came to a rest in front of me, meeting my gaze with sulfuric yellow eyes. He nodded. "Eldest, greetings."

I curtsied to him. "And to you." I noticed several things about this drake. For one, he had a harness tied around his shoulders and draped along his back, clearly for a mortal to attach themselves. Each of his three nose-horns were chipped off at the end, and his left wing-talon was missing, the black claw torn off. In several places between his scales I could _see_ a pale blue light, as if he was glowing from within. They looked like little tears, even though they weren't; below his neck, along his flanks, around the spikes on his tail-club. "I'm guessing Vajarn wants me with you?"

He nodded. "Indeed, Eldest."

I held up a hand, blood rushing to my face through my twilight scale armor. "Please, just call me Amanthe. Who're you, then?"

He blinked at the apparent informality the 'oldest member of his Flight' used. Titans, it wasn't like I was _that_ much older than some of the dragons. Only about twenty years older than Selriona. "My name's Ultraxion. I'm assigned to give you a lift for the defense." He gestured with a wing to the harness on his back. "We're leaving in a few minutes, why don't you get on so I can explain the precise situation to you?"

"Hmm, would be good. Been so busy with the evacuation..." I held a hand to my mouth to try - in vain - to stifle a yawn. I shook it off. I had to be fresh as peacebloom if I was going into a fight. I walked over to Ultraxion's side while he moved his wing out of the way. I brought up the spell for a levitate on myself, but took care to keep its duration low and overcharge its effects, making me 'leap' a good two meters into the air and onto Ultraxion's back. I gripped the rider-end of the harness and placed it around my waist, clicking it into security and letting my legs dangle off either side of his flanks.

"Alright. You didn't catch Algalon the Observer's plan, did you?"

I shook my head before realizing he couldn't see me. "Can't say I did."

"Well, here's the basic summary; we're holding out as long as possible. He's sent Mimiron to Uldum via portal; Mimiron's to activate the Reorigination mechanism after - "

"_WHAT?_"

He cringed under my voice. Right. Better hearing. "Please, let me finish."

"Sorry." I leaned over and scratched next to his left earplate, making him purr and wag his tail a bit.

"Anyway, he's going to activate it after reprogramming it. Apparently, being a Titan construct, of ingenuity no less, he can set it to 'target' only the demons and cultists. Didn't really understand how General Vajarn explained it, but it seems the mechanism doesn't 'blast' things, it just makes the environment right around their skins as hot as the surface of the sun. Algalon plans to use _that _to kill Sargeras. Mimiron finishes reprogramming before Sargeras arrives, and until he _does_ we hold out. Then, when the Dark Titan is here, Mimiron activates the mechanism to fry Sargeras. Then a select group of people just sorta move in and clean him up while he's weakened. Also, it'll kill the last Old God."

I stifled another shout. "Wouldn't that, you know, destroy Azeroth?"

"Apparently not." There was commotion among the other dragons. Some began to roar excitedly. "The way Vajarn says Algalon explained it is that, well, the Old Gods are parasites on Azeroth, right?" I nodded, and he understood the pause. "Well, parasites need _something_ from the host, else they wouldn't attach onto it in the first place. In this case, the Old Gods attaching to Azeroth means that 'tearing them out' would destroy Azeroth. We don't know what they're getting _from_ Azeroth, but if we can't tear the Old God out, we can force it to sort of unlatch from the world and _then_ vaporize it. That's what the reoriginator does; it makes the environment unbearable for the Old God, and forces it to unlatch. Then the _continued_ frying vaporizes it. Done, no risk. All enemy armies? Gone. All that's left is to bring all our forces to bear on a weakened Sargeras."

"Gonna have to get him pretty close to us, if we don't want him to just retreat after being fried." I mused. "It'll be risky to get Mimiron to activate it in time. But if he does..." A grin split my face. "We might just win this war after all."

"Yes, but first we have to _hold out_ for another six... no, five days. Which is why we're flying now. Come on."

"I'm the one riding you," I reminded Ultraxion. Other dragons were quickly rising up into the air. In the horizon, I could see a dark cloud approaching, soflty glowing fel green.

He paused. "Oh. Right." Then he reared onto his hind legs and flapped his wings, throwing me against his neck. "Hang on!" With a leap that sent my stomach into my legs, Ultraxion took off into the air. Winds whipped around me as he rose on the thermals, propelled with the rest of his kind towards the approaching group that had to be the fel-wyrms. I pulled myself back up and wove a shield around myself to stop the rush of air from blinding me. The living dragons split off into a variety of groups and formations, spreading out to draw the undead dragons in all directions. This was clearly going to be a mobile battle.

I tightened my grip on Ultraxion as he, flanked by a green and a blue, swung sharply to the right, dodging orbs of what looked to be fel mist. Ultraxion's wing beats faltered for a moment, as did the other two's as the orb's aura of mist coasted over them.

_Mind control mist_, I told myself. _Selriona told me this mist controls minds. Better start shielding._

Frantically, I began to speak words of power, granting fortitude and shielding to any dragons I could see, staring with Ultraxion, giving him protection from the fumes.

I quickly saw how this battle was to be. Dragons against fel-dragons, drakes against fel-drakes. Split up into formations, flank them from the sides or the back. When one group does well, they help another, and snowballs into a victory.

Satisfied I'd done all the shielding I could, I began gathering power for a mind blast, shadows writhing around my hands. A fel drake, emerald mist in its chest and sickly green light in its eyes, came down at Ultraxion from above and to his left, claws outstretched. I looked into its eyes as Ultraxion banked a hard right, and blasted its mind. An orb of black surrounded its bleached-white skull, and it instantly went limp as I fried the magic that gave it intelligence. It plummeted to the ground far, far below, so far down I could barely even see the trees...

_Don't!_ I shouted at myself, wrenching my vision away to weave a renew on a green drake, slowly sealing the wound he had along his tail. _Do not look down!_

Ultraxion came up on another fel drake, who was busy chasing another twilight left and right, firing the occasional blast of mist out from its maw. I gave out a strangled 'gurk' as Ultraxion reared backwards and nearly stopped in mid air, his stomach facing the skeletal dragon. His only wing talon, on his right, flared to life, as did the 'cracks' in his body. Like water, dark blue energy flowed along the joint and lashed outwards towards the fel drake, forming a coil of hissing twilight lightning, which aggressively leaped across the distance, shattering the skeleton's vertebrae. The two halves of the skeleton fell down.

It took me a few moments to get my wits together, in which time another skeletal drake nearly took my head off with its tail club. Ultraxion screeched and whirled around, which meant I was upside down, my hair flopping towards the mountains far, far below. I heard a faint gurgling coming from within Ultaxion, and then the skeletal drake was behind us with a pissed off look and a twilight-scorched skull and I was right side up again.

I realized Ultraxion was busy hunting down another drake to free up one of our allies, so I gritted my teeth and turned around, holding my left arm out. I spoke a shadowy word of pain at the fel drake, then let flaying magic rise up from within me, projecting the purple and black beam at the fel drake's skull. It screeched in pain but kept flapping. I sustained the spell, and was pleased to notice the fel drake falling behind. Soon, it tossed its head and turned tail to launch itself at an unsuspecting red.

_Mistake, buddy._ I called upon my twilight fires, and imagined a point in space, right inside the fel drake's ribcage. There was a giant burst of twilight flame, rushing outwards from that point, shattering its ribs and shredding its already-thin wing membranes. The undead dragon dropped like a stone, but the red I just 'saved' fell down soon after, a bite in her neck trailing blood as she fell...

Before my breakfast could rise, Ultraxion spun around in the air, and started flying the other way, slamming me against his neck in the process.

He flew straight towards a group of three fel drakes, which noticed him and, without sound, changed course for him.

"Whoa, Ultraxion, you sure about - "

"GRAH!" Right before the drakes were in range, another arc of twilight lightning flew outwards, this time from Ultraxion's horns. It crushed one drake's skull, and that one got in the way of the others, so all three fell downwards in a tangle of bones, hitting the ground far, far below.

"You're pretty magical for a drake," I noted, shielding us again and healing a bronze male. And it was true; most twilight drakes had difficulty producing portals to the twilight realm, let alone twilight _lightning. _Ultraxion dove forward with his claws outstretched and tackled another drake, freeing up a green. He pulled hard and tore off the skull, letting it and the rest of the body plummet. Suddenly , the green he just saved from being chased had sickly mist blow over him. He turned over to us and opened his own maw. An orb of poison flew out and broke on Ultraxion's shield.

Feeling sick at what I had to do, I shot a twilight fireball at the mind controlled green. He screeched in agony as the fires began ripping at his scales, burning deeper. Ultraxion opened his own maw, releasing a dark blue river of fire onto the male. He dropped like a stone.

"Well, funny story about that," Ultraxion said now that we had a moment to breathe. "So, apparently, the Blue Flight likes to make their lakes out of the same thing mana potions are made of. I was visiting them a few decades ago, and well, I was just so _thirsty..._"

"Got it, left!" Reacting to my shout, Ultraxion whipped his head around and blasted that drake with another arc of twilight lightning, this time from his talonless left wing. It too dropped, a large section of its bony body vaporized.

When my shield faded, I took a moment to look around, I noticed that this fight was going in our favor. While the adult dragons were having difficulty against the fel wyrms, the skeletal drakes were fairly beaten. Now we could start lending assistance to the adult dragons. The entire fight had actually shifted, slowly moving to over the more mountainous regions and away from Aviana's Shrine.

"That one!" I pointed out to my ride, placing another renew over a blue drake and being rewarded by her with a rush of mana, nearly filling my mana pool to the brim. Ultraxion flew over to a proper fel wyrm, and the two of us began pelting its joints with twilight fireballs, seeking the weakest ones. Ultraxion swung around to the side, avoiding an arcane missile. I lost my balance (Thank the Titans for the harness!) and grabbed at my waist, making sure the daggers I'd gotten in Ulduar were still there.

The aerial fight continued, on and on. We blasted down the fel wyrm, severing its joints in key places. Then onto another. And another.

Suddenly, Ultraxion dropped out from under me. I squeaked as the harness grew taught and pulled me down with him, moments before an orb of green fog slammed through the air we'd been in just a moment ago.

"Hang on!" he shouted, and then began to perform barrel roll after barrel roll, blasts swirling around us. It was like the entire branch of the assault had chosen to focus on us. At this rate, we'd be hit. I tried to pull us into the twilight realm, but the world around me kept swirling in and out of focus, gravity pulling me up and then left and then down and then right and then up again. My head started to grow lighter and lighter as Ultraxion kept up his mad dance through the air. Why should I even be helping him? He was the source of so much of my distress. I had daggers. I had his trust. I had proximity. All it would take was one push into the neck...

I shook my head clear of these thoughts, aware that my right hand had actually gripped a dagger and that Ultraxion _wasn't_ dancing through the air anymore, and instead flew in circles around another fel wyrm, blasting it with dark lightning. _It's the mist,_ I told myself. _Shield yourself, Amanthe. Focus._

Another shield of light flared around my head and I called upon my inner will. "Alright, Ultraxion, behind us! Three drakes!"

He whirled around, and this time I was ready for the tidal forces. As one, we unleashed a barrage of magic, and then continued flying forward.

"Thank you, Elde - I mean, Amanthe."

"Hey, anytime."

Then, the air shook and sparked with heat. My lips cracked and my sweat vaporized. Red light flooded my vision, and Ultraxion howled, throwing his head back, face contorted with agony. I looked over to the right and, for a frozen moment in time, I saw a gigantic jet of fire, so thick as to be almost solid, spewing straight up, carving a meter-wide hole in Ultraxion's deep indigo wings. The flames cut out, leaving a smoking, smoldering hole in Ultraxion's wing that made me taste my lunch.

Then we began to fall.

Ultraxion tried his best to right himself, to grip the skies once more, and I did my best to help him with levitations. But in the end, he was a drake, and my power just wasn't enough to _lift_ him. The ground grew closer and closer, the mountains enveloping us...

_Crunch._

_Roar._

_Slide._

_Whimper._

I got my senses back. In a flash, my dagger was out and cutting the harness. I dropped to the ground, nearly impaling myself on my weapon. I staggered away from Ultraxion.

_That_ was when I vomited, turning to the side and collapsing to my knees as I retched. When I was finished, I turned back to the whimpering twilight drake.

"Stay still, stay still." He instantly laid his head back down, breathing heavily, injured wing resting over his flank. That wasn't the worst, though. No, the worst of it was his forelegs, broken so bad I could see the bone jutting out, bleeding copiously. A few renews took care of the bleeding, but my healing was not advanced enough to heal the bones of dragons.

_Think, think. Keep him from going into shock. _I desperately look around for anything to elevate his legs with. We weren't in a good spot.

We'd fallen in a very mountainous region, practically a _bowl_ cut off from the rest of the fight; I could hear dragons, but see them? No, we'd fallen too far away. Half of the ten meter wide bowl was cut off, revealing a steep slope downwards to a land razed with dark magic, metal buildings covering it like cancer; Ultraxion had crash landed on the exact opposite side of that. In the immediate area, there were no trees, only grass and dirt.

Dirt it is then. I pushed some of the soil into a mound beneath Ultraxion's broken legs, elevating them.

Alright, alright. What next? Keep him warm. It was a bit chilly, thanks to the overcast skies, so I knelt next to Ultraxion and laid my hands on his flank.

He whined. "Wha... what are you - "

"I need to keep you from going into shock. You need to stay warm, Ultraxion." I bit my lips. Just lifting his forelegs and sharing my body heat with the cold-blooded reptile wouldn't be enough. We needed help...

There was a sound like rushing flame, and I turned around to where the bowl dropped off to the Legion and Cult's base. What looked like a streak of fire soared up and, at the top of its arc, transformed into a female tauren. She fell back down quickly, slamming her right fist into the ground. When she did, she released a flaming shockwave which, despite fading before it reached me, did knock me back onto Ultraxion's stomach. The grass was charred black in a perfect circle around her.

She stalked after us slowly, sneering. "Someone say warm?"

She wore cultist robes, but bright orange and patterned to look like flames. Her ashy fur had brown circles splotched in it, in which burned miniature forest fires, embers flickering in and out of existence. Her sooty gray horns looked sharp enough to pierce through solid elementium, and smoke rose up from her upper arms into the air. Her eyes were blazing infernal orbs. The color didn't stop in her eyes, though, the orange spreading along her face likes cracked glass, and it also streaked her hands, as if outlining the bones beneath. She flexed her hands, fire crackling in them. Memory tugged at me. I knew this tauren. I remembered her.

"Saltio," I whispered.

She halted her advance, looking surprised to say the least, as I stood back up from Ultraxion. A moment later her anger flared back to life. "And who are you, _mortal,_ to know who I am?"

"That's right, I was a blood elf back then." This was going to be a fight. No way I could talk her out of it, not after stewing in her corruption for three centuries. "You really don't remember me, do you, Saltio? I'm hurt, considering how hard you tried to _kill_ me back then."

She hesitated, then snarled. "_Amanthe._ So, you're a human. It fucking figures." She looked at Ultraxion, and smirked. "Got you good," she said, making him snarl before leaning back in pain. She looked back up at me. "Well, Amanthe, shall we finish what we started?"

I leaned down carefully and picked up the dagger on the ground, holding one in each hand. "Of course." And if things went south, I could always pull Ultraxion and I into the twilight realm.

Saltio chuckled menacingly. "Excellent. But first." She turned to Ultraxion, eyes smoldering. "No interruptions." She held her hands out to the side, and compressed them into a ball, as if holding a fireball, but there was nothing there.

Ultraxion, however, clearly noticed_ something_. He whipped himself into a frenzy, eyes wide. "NO! WAIT! PLEASE, DON'T - " Saltio spread her arms out quickly. There was a _whumph_ from Ultraxion, and his head hit the ground, yellow eyes unfocused. Smoke poured out of his mouth and nostrils, followed by a thick stream of blood. He didn't move another centimeter.

I stood there in shock, my daggers nearly dropping from my hands. Saltio had just... just like that...

I gulped, facing Saltio again. "Well, old friend," I said shakily. I readied my daggers and wove a shield of light around myself, sinking into shadowform. "Let's get this over with, shall we?" I flicked one of my daggers through the air.

"Thought you'd never ask."

Saltio vanished into a trail of fire and zipped towards me at lightning speed. She reformed right infront of my face and lashed out with a flaming fist, aiming at my gut. Luckily, my shield absorbed the impact, but she simply reached over the barrier of light, grabbed it, and pulled me in to her knee, which successfully broke the shield. I noticed her pulling her fist back again, and quickly sunk into the twilight realm.

Saltio was a blazing light of purple corruption. She jerked, and I could actually _see_ her outline, the taint was so defined. I took my daggers, and positioned myself behind her while she was still wondering where I'd gone. I resurfaced and drove my right dagger into her spine with surprisingly little resistance, right below her neck, and pulled it back out.

I don't know what I expected to happen, but it wasn't for Saltio to bleed a bit of ash before the wound closed. She spun around. I ducked, expecting her to hook my head, but instead she brought both her hands close to her chest and then pushed out. A conical blast of fire washed over me, more force than heat thank the Titans, knocking me back. I landed on my back, groaned once, and got back up. I jumped out of the way as Saltio tossed a pyroblast at my location, carving a meter-wide crater where I'd just been. I gawked at the impact. That... that could've been _me._ Or what would be left of me.

Saltio transformed herself into flames and dashed at me again, but I was ready. The moment she reformed I levitated over her leg sweep and spoke a word of pain onto her, followed by a devouring plague. I sunk back to the ground and into the twilight realm as she punched me. Once the strike passed, I came back up and sank both daggers into her gut and ripped them sideways, spewing ash in all directions. The injury healed up, and I jumped away, leaning back as she shot a fireball. The projectile traveled by just centimeters away from me.

Saltio dashed a little distance away from me, and we stared each other down. Every now and then she transformed into fire and dashed a short distance sideways, while my curses slowly wore her down. Not like they seemed to be doing much.

She began to rapidly dash forwards and back, but definitely approaching me. I got ready, and jumped to the side when she appeared infront of me. Not fast enough, since another fiery shockwave threw me back. I quickly shielded myself, and not a moment too soon, since Saltio began tossing fireballs at me like they were nothing.

I landed and wove another spell. Saltio stumbled back, her mouth snapped shut. She opened and closed her hands, clearly trying to _do_ something, but couldn't thanks to the silence. I took full advantage of this pause in her attacks, blasting her mind and unloading at her with twilight fireballs. Each one that hit her made her stumble, punching a fist-sized hole in her body that, just for a second, leaked ash before sealing up. Even her robes regenerated. I hurled a twilight pyroblast at her, but by then the spell had worn off and she dashed out of the projectile's path.

_She keeps regenerating! How do I beat her? How did I beat her last time?_

I didn't beat her. Seer... Liwatha, that was her name. She saved me by throwing water on her. But there _was_ no water here, even the grass was being charred. And Saltio didn't regenerate back then. How do you kill someone that keeps healing?

I sank back into the twilight realm as Saltio appeared next to me, her flaming leg already in motion. I barely avoided getting a hoof imprint, so I spun around, reappeared in the physical realm, and stabbed my daggers into her spine again; one below her neck, one right above her tail, before removing them. She spun around with a reckless punch. I ducked under it, using some residual speed from my last shielding. I lashed out with my weapons again, but before they could connect Saltio dashed back to a safe distance, next to Ultraxion's body.

Wait... if she were really regenerating, she wouldn't be afraid to take hits. Which meant she wasn't actually _healing_, her body was just filling itself in like a mold. All it did was prevent me from seeing her weaken. Which meant all I had to do was keep stabbing her and blasting her until she died. Preferably _before_ getting roasted myself.

I unleashed a beam of magic to flay at Saltio's mind. She stumbled back as it collided with her head, but dashed a short distance to break to connection. Once she reappeared she bent her knees and began tossing what looked like balls of smoke at me.

_That's not good!_ I overcharged another levitation spell on myself, flinging me high into the air above the balls of smoke, which began to explode when they reached my previous destination, filling the air with choking smoke. I levitated back to a safe area, only for Saltio to dash right next to me and punch me in the chest.

The air was forced from my lungs as I was sent flying back. Before I even landed, Saltio turned to fire and dashed up to me, flaming fist flying out. I sunk into the twilight realm before it could connect, though, and skidded along the ground. I got back to my feet and circled around the bewildered taint-outline of Saltio.

Quickly reappearing, I sunk my left dagger into the back of her neck, sticking out the other end in a shower of ash. I pulled it back and, before she could retaliate, sunk back into twilight. I resurfaced elsewhere. I grabbed her shoulder, stifling a yelp as it burned me, and drove my right dagger into the base of her spine, before vanishing again. I held off a moment longer this time, then rose back up and dropped down, clumsily sweeping her leg out from under her. It was like kicking a brick wall, but Saltio reliably hit the ground, just in time for me to jump up, sink both daggers into her head, and pull them back out.

Without bothering to get up, Saltio dissolved into flames and dashed away, reforming upright. She turned to face me, and narrowed her eyes. "Oh," she hissed. "You're just _begging_ for me to blacken you."

"You know what, Saltio? You've changed!"

She growled, and turned into fire again. She shot straight up before reforming, curling into a ball. Then she changed back and dashed straight at me. Right before she reached me she changed back to normal and fell like a rock, slamming the ground with one fist. A fire nova radiated out, catching me and tossing me back like a rag doll. Luckily, my shadowform kept me from catching fire, but it still _burned. _I got back up quick, expecting Saltio to be on me, but instead she was keeping herself at range, sometimes flickering a meter to the side to keep me from locking in on her. Of course, each time she did, she tossed two fireballs into the air, one from each hand; one flew right at me, another arced through the air and took a second longer to reach me. The result was that I frantically dodged fireballs, speaking another word of pain at Saltio and plaguing her again, the magical disease slowly healing my burns.

I couldn't hit her with anything else, since she kept _dodging._ I felt my soul strengthen, and shielded myself again. The spell gave me a burst of speed, strength surging through my legs. I took advantage of that, and charged at Saltio.

She clearly hadn't been expecting that, and so stopped her flickers long enough for me to reach her and bury my daggers in her gut, launch a twilight fireball at her from point blank range, and kick her away. Mid-kick, my target vanished and appeared beside me. Already off balance, her fiery shockwave sent my flying, and I got a face full of dirt and charred grass. A searing, furry hand gripped the back of my neck's armor and lifted me up before slamming me back into the dirt. Before she could do anything else I quickly entered the twilight realm and got the hells _out_ of there, breathing heavily. After a few moments I got my breath back, and entered the physical world once again.

" - you coward!" Saltio spun around, fire spewing from her hands like a river. The flame settled on the ground, forming a ring of fire around the mad tauren, stretching two meters in all directions. Suddenly, she turned around and spotted me, her orange eyes narrowing. She hovered up in the air, and the fires began to twist and flow into her...

"No you don't!" I shouted, silencing her before she could heal too much. She dropped back down, and I wasted no time in gathering my mana into a giant boulder of twilight flame, throwing the dark blue pyroblast at her as the fire faded. It impacted Saltio with a mighty _whumph,_ sending her flying back, an entire section of her stomach vaporized, letting me see right through. Ash soon flowed into the hole and recolorized, making her look as good as new... until I hit her with a second pyroblast with identical effect.

She got back up and dashed away from a third pyroblast, forming her own pyroblast in a split second and tossing it at me. My eyes widened, but I couldn't get out of the way in time.

As it turned out, I didn't need to. The fiery boulder stopped right before me and just... hovered there. I breathed out in relief...

Then, with a snap of Saltio's fingers, it exploded, burning winds buffeting me and tossing me back. I kept moving backwards, and I could see Saltio walking towards me slowly, her hands out, the air around them shimmering with heat as a dry wind blew me back, powered by her temperatures. I scrambled for purchase as she kept pushing me, over to the edge of the bowl, right above a massive drop. In a last ditch effort, I dug my heels into the dirt, halting my motion, but my hair was already dangling over. Saltio came to stand over me, smirking.

"Any last words?" she grated out, glowing eyes piercing into my soul.

"Behind you!" I shouted, sounding genuinely concerned. She fell for it hook, line, and sinker; the winds let up and she turned around with a startled 'What?'. In that time I found my balance and launched myself at her, knocking Saltio to the ground and repeatedly stabbing her back with my daggers, each time pulling ash out of her body. Suddenly, she turned into fire and dashed _upwards,_ burning me as she went through my body. I looked up as she rematerialized and fell down, her hooves blazing. I leaped backwards, but not far enough. She stomped the ground and sent out another wave of fire. Before I could react she turned my way and flicked both hands up.

Sensing something _bad_ about to happen, I let my body fall apart, dispersing myself into a cloud of shadows. Sure enough, a geyser of flame shot up where I was just a moment ago, blasting harmlessly through my shadowy form. I recoalesced, my mana replenished, and silenced Saltio again. I blasted her with another twilight pyroblast and refreshed my afflictions on her. She stumbled once the barrage stopped, her wounds healing like always. She glared at me, and coughed up some ash. I was hurting her. But Titans, I was so tired, and the heat she gave off seemed to add weight to my eyelids and limbs.

She held her hands apart, and then pushed them together, as if cupping a ball, similar to how she did just before killing Ultraxion. I felt something in my head. It was a strange pressure, like something poised to explode outwards...

_SHIT!_

I sunk into the twilight realm and threw myself to the side. Saltio's outline of violet corruption spread her arms apart, and the spot where my brain had been a moment ago was engulfed in a small explosion. I rose back up and kicked Saltio's feet out from under her - she felt a lot lighter - and blasted her mind. She dashed away and got back up, eyeing me as coldly as someone bonded with a fire elemental could.

"Well," she growled. "Looks like I'm not the only one who's gotten stronger."

"Yeah," I panted. "Don't remember you fucking_ regenerating._"

"I've learned more tricks than _that,_" she scowled. Then she threw her arms out to the side, and a cocoon of thick smoke enveloped her, swirling around her body in a shell. She dashed towards me, cocoon following her, and I reacted by throwing a twilight fireball at her.

Later, I swore at myself for having fallen for the same trick she used on me in Orgrimmar. The smoke shield exploded outward, getting in my eyes and throat. I slammed my burning eyes shut and tried to scream, only for it to turn into a hacking cough, then a grunt as a flaming hoof found its mark in my stomach, throwing me far back. I wove a renew onto myself, which started to slowly siphon away the smoke, but it was awful. I couldn't see, I couldn't _breathe. _I focused desperately, and reached into the Twisting Nether. I found what I sought and brought it to Azeroth, the slobbering shadowfiend crawling out of the ground and instantly going after Saltio. While it distracted her, I sank into the twilight realm, still choking and blinded. I rose out of my shadowform as I started to heal myself, each wave of the Holy Light diminishing the effects. When I could finally see and breathe again, I let my body turn dark again.

I resurfaced into the physical realm, and the two of us resumed fighting, since Saltio had just finished killing off my shadowfiend. Though there _was_ more ash on the charred dirt than before, and she seemed to be busy regenerating bite marks.

She dashed towards me, I sunk into twilight and surprised her with a dagger to the head. She threw fireballs at me, I dodged them easily. She laid down a carpet of fire and tried to heal by sucking of the flames, I silenced her. It was clear that this fight was going towards my favor. Evidently, I'd gotten much stronger than she had over the past three centuries, and while in hit-and-runs she probably _would_ be devastating, this was a straight up fight, where I could just keep 'teleporting' around her as much as I wanted; I at least could see which _way_ she dashed. She could've disengaged any time she wanted, but she was clearly out for blood.

It helped that I had a constant stream of healing thanks to both my devouring plague and the vampiric nature of my shadow powers, which also gave me a slight trickle of mana.

Saltio stumbled as she recovered from a psychic scream that had sent her running like a chicken, and glared my way, spitting out more ashes. Then she held up her right hand, and the ashes she had bled flew back to her, forming what looked like a giant, two handed sword, its edges serrated and very sharp. Despite being made of cinders, it looked very, very deadly. She lifted it with _one_ arm.

Saltio and her new sword both turned to fire and streaked straight up, while also moving overhead me. She reformed and came down with it, trying to slice me in half.

Weaving a weak levitation on her, I held up my daggers in an X and caught her strike, kneeling down under the force of the strike, even with the levitation. My arms shook under the impact, my strength rapidly fading from the ferocity of Saltio's attacks. She looked surprised for a moment as her weight returned, and in that time I, still holding my daggers, quickly wove together a pyroblast and launched it at her. She grunted in pain and fell back, her sword falling to ashes again.

She regenerated the gaping hole in her chest, and brought her hands together, a blazing ball of fire forming in them. By this time, the spell I had in mind had come off cooldown, the residual magical lines from using it the last time would no longer interfere with casting it again. Right as Saltio unleashed her flames in a searing beam, similar to the one that had plucked Ultraxion and I out of the sky, I dispersed into shadows. The river of condensed fire went right through me, and I drifted past it, over and behind Saltio, reforming.

While she recovered from the strain of letting loose all the fire, I focused on a point inside her body, and conjured an explosion of twilight fire from inside of her. She gasped in pain as the enormous hole reformed, turning around on shaking hooves. With visible effort, she conjured a blazing orange pyroblast between her hands, holding it close to her chest. I ran at her, and when she flicked out her wrists to send it at me I faded into the twilight realm and moved behind her corruption signature.

I drew the shadows and mist of the twilight realm towards me, slimy cold energy writhing along my skin, under my charred scale armor. I came back into the physical realm and unleashed the power towards a turning Saltio's chest. The hissing bolt of twilight lightning pierced her robes, came out the other side, and carved a shallow gash in the mountain behind her. Her mouth opened in surprise in a silent scream and her body shook as I sustained the barrage for one second... two seconds... five seconds...

I stopped, and dropped my hands to my knees, panting heavily. Saltio stumbled once, hemorrhaging ash from the massive hole in her abdomen. It mostly regenerated, but not quite all the way. She stumbled, reaching down with one hand, then fell onto all fours, tail drooped. She choked, gasped, and spat out ashes. For a moment fire covered her body and she partially dissolved into flames, but then she changed back.

I looked down at her. "You know, when I first met you, never in a million years would I have guessed this is where we end up."

She looked up at me with as much hatred as she could muster in her injured form. Which is to say, not much. "Are you gonna mock me or are you gonna finish it?" Saltio's head dropped back down, and she coughed again, more ashes coming out. Her fur, her horns, even her robes flaked off gray particles. She was beaten; even if I didn't do anything, she'd fall apart all on her own.

I shook my head. "For the record, Saltio, I _am_ sorry."

"For _what_, Amanthe?" she weakly spat. "For killing me?"

"For not saving you, for not trying harder to save you from the Cult." I sighed, gathering most of what was left of my magic into a twilight pyroblast. "I am so, _so _sorry."

"I don't... want... your Old Gods damned... pity."

_As you wish._ I fired the pyroblast at her, and it impacted with a massive indigo explosion. I shielded my eyes, and when the light faded, I looked.

There was nothing left of Saltio but ashes drifting in the wind.

_'Hey,__'_ I panted into the link. _'Selriona?'_

_'Why, what happened? Is the attack repelled?'_

_'I don't know, but I'm stranded in the mountains. Took care of Saltio, but... she killed Ultraxion. I need someone to come get me.'_

_'Yeah, yeah. I'm on my way, portal to Hyjal coming right up. Ground invasion's beaten, so I got time.'_

_'Thank you.' _I looked at Ultraxion, and walked over to him. His yellow eyes still gazed off into nothing, blood still flowed from his nostrils and open maw.

I laid a hand on his cold flank. "Thank you for your service to the Twilight Dragonflight," I told him, drawing on the absolute last scraps of my mana. "You will be missed." And so, waiting for Selriona, I cremated Ultraxion.

If only he'd be the last.

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><p><strong>Don't be shy, review, let me know what you think! All 60+ of you. Yes, I can check :-)<strong>


	46. Chapter 46:Looming Assault

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Thanks to dharak for beta'ing this chapter.**

**Chapter published 6/15/13**

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><p>Amanthe<p>

And so it went on.

The fight with Saltio had banged me up more than was apparent at first. After being teleported back to the World Tree courtesy of Selriona, I was placed under the care of the healers. They were unable to use magic, since it was more needed in the field to keep it fresh, and free of diminishing returns.

My shadowform had kept me from catching on fire and diluted the burns, but apparently it hadn't worked as well as I thought. I looked like a lobster, and already the skin was blistering from the second degree burns, and it took all my willpower to not pick at them. Not to mention several broken bones from her preternaturally strong strikes.

According to the information I'd been able to bully out of my night elf he- Profilealer, the Shrine of Goldrinn was lost. While the southern prong, which Ultraxion and I had taken part in, and the western prong, which was on the ground, had both been repelled, the Aspects and accompanying dragons had to retreat from the northern prong to live to fight another day. Casualties were high, and given that the fel wyrms could resurrect dragons, it wasn't a pretty picture. The fel wyrms stormed into Goldrinn's shrine virtually unopposed and laid waste to all there. Mages managed to mass teleport a lot of the army out, but even then...

So now we were pushed back to the Circle of Life, formerly the Circle of Cinders during the Cataclysm. It was pretty vital to hold that position, since if the Burning Legion took _that,_ then they could just set up their fel cannons and rain down hells on the World Tree. Just four more days until Sargeras was expected to arrive. Surely, we could hold on for that long? We didn't exactly have much choice. And damn it, I wanted to be out there _doing_ something! Not sitting here as nurses and healers tended to my injuries. I wanted to be helping to save the world. But what could I do? As much as I hated to admit it, I was injured, and I'd spent a fair bit of mana healing myself during the actual fight, even if most of that healing went towards dispelling Saltio's smoke explosion. I had heavy diminishing returns, so now I had the dubious honor of being healed by salves and hopes.

I wasn't _that_ hurt. Just a few broken bones and some burns. Nothing the Guardians of Hyjal didn't have anything for, however rationed their supplies were. In half a week I'd be back up, according to Selriona.

However, just because we'd lost the Shrine of Goldrinn didn't mean that all was lost. My flight had staged a raid on the Cult's outposts with Wrathion, and his lava utterly leveled their infrastructure. Algalon single-handedly stopped a roundabout assault on the World Tree, from what I'd heard, while the Watchers and Liberality Confederacy had gone to help the doomed Shrine of Aviana evacuate. I'd killed Saltio, which meant her relentless guerrilla-style raids would cease.

But by the Titans, just _laying_ there was so _boring!_ It was like the gods had decided to take my position and Selriona's and switch them! Now she was the one walking around there, helping save Azeroth, while I laid here and drained medicine. I was jealous, I felt so useless...

I shakily lifted my left arm, groaning in pain as I did. Was I really so weak? Granted, I didn't use twilight lightning often, but...

I leaned back onto my bed and looked up into the overcast sky. It had been cloudy for a while now, and it was rapidly growing cold. Un'goro crater, probably. Volcanoes always mess up natural climate. There was nobody in the beds right next to me, but I certainly wasn't alone. I tried to ignore the healer off to the side shaking his head and pulling up a cover.

The air suddenly crackled with power, and I could almost feel my insides squirming, some coiled instructions deep within me protesting at the foreign energy.

A towering monument of red stars walked up before me. With a sudden surge of energy I sat up, propping myself up with my shoulders as Algalon approached.

He looked down at me with his faceless gaze, and I wondered what he wanted. "Mortal Amanthe. Greetings."

"How do you know my name?" I asked panicked.

"Electrochemical signatures in the brain can be deciphered. Gives knowledge as to thought processes and memories. Among these, your title." He paused. "Are you alright?" he asked, sounding strained, like he was trying to put feeling in his voice but it was hard.

"Why do you - "

" - care? It is in everyone's best interest to maintain high morale in the face of such odds and self-destructive plan."

"Good to know you really care," I said bitterly, rolling my eyes. "Is this really the best plan?"

"Affirmative. Both the mind construct Nalestrasza and the tactical savant Vajarn approve of said plan. Its risk is the lowest out of all possible courses of action, with a seventy-nine percent chance of world-ending failure, five percent chance of total success with the elimination of Sargeras, and remainder percent being Other." I didn't like the emphasis he put on 'other'.

"Nothing better?"

"Nothing better." His voice changed tone, from 'bored' monotone to 'pained' monotone. "Although, I am somewhat uncertain of my calculations. I know better than to rely purely on those." He cocked his giant head to the side. "Is there anything you need? Food? Water?"

I hesitated. "Something to eat would be nice. Something salty, I haven't been eating enough of that."

Algalon held out a palm. Lightning crackled on it, reality seemed to distort, until it condensed into a simple pretzel. Tiny red stars surrounded it and guided it down to me. I reached out with a hand and grabbed it.

"Why are you giving me something to eat, not the others?"

"Energy to matter conversion is an inefficient process, unable to do so in large quantities. Only practical method is to do so one at a time. You were... first in line, I think your kind would say." He turned to walk away. "Rest. I have modified your quantity of metabolism material to accelerate healing. We'll need every available force to defend Hyjal the last few days." Algalon moved on to the next conscious wounded and engaged them in as idle a conversation as he could.

I sighed, eating the pretzel he'd conjured for me. When that was done, I fell back onto the bed and succumbed to sleep.

* * *

><p>Selriona<p>

I looked down at the Circle of Life and sighed. Today we had a break. Today we had a breather; the Legion was scheduled to gather their forces and launch a massive assault on the Circle of Life early morning tomorrow, which meant today was a frenzy of making sure everything was in order to survive the assault. Almost no cultists would join the assault; most of them were dead, most likely the closest the Twilight's Hammer had ever truly gotten to extinction. The Old God knew that if it were ever to escape, it would be now.

Four more days until it all came crashing down. Four more days until all our defenses would invariably be shattered by Sargeras, and then _we_ would shatter _him. _But after...

I tried not to think of Amanthe. But what could I do? She'd said Mariel, Ellemayne, Droga, and Katalyn had helped her in Ulduar. They were the same people she'd gone to the past with, where she _died._ Some part of me had always hoped that wasn't the case. That they were in fact from much further ahead than three hundred years. It was possible that the Kingslayers were sent back right _after_ the war and Amanthe much later to the same date, but I doubted it. She spoke to often of her long life, too often of being tired of the world. I hated it, I hated, I hated it and it made me want to roar to the heavens and empty my flames into the sky, to lash out with my magic at something, _anything! _She shouldn't have to die, _she shouldn't have to die! _And I know I should tell her, but what to say?

_ 'By the way, Amanthe, after this war is over I may have to send you on a mission that doubles as a death sentence? I've known about this for hundreds of years, by the way, and only decided to tell you now. Friends?'  
><em>

Yeah, that would blow over well.

But that could wait. It had to wait. We had a war to win now, and all my focus had to be on that. Can't lose the future because you focus on the past.

But what could I do now? The plans were set. We knew what to do, where to go. Algalon had decided that. Grounded as I was, I couldn't help my kind against the fel wyrms, and that thought _strangled_ me.

I let out a breath through my nostrils, sitting on my haunches and curling my tail around me, thumping the spiked club against the ground thoughtfully. I tucked my wings against my back, looked up, and closed my eyes, thinking.

I understood very little of either volcano or climate science. But I did catch the gist of what the druids and shamans were worried about with Un'goro, even if the ash cloud wouldn't be blown towards us.

Thank the Titans for small miracles, volcanic ash _sucks._

Even so, the supervolcano apparently released a lot of sulfur into the air, which reacted with the air and formed thick, heavy clouds, which would very soon cover the entire world, and persist for years to come, blotting out the sun. It would make sure that 'summer' did not exist for another decade. Being cold blooded, I wasn't looking forward to a perpetual winter, at all. And beyond that, the whole idea of a planet-wide cloud made my scales bristle. It was all to similar to what had happened in the Cataclysm, as Neltharion's instability began to rile up the elements, covering the world in storm. These weren't storm clouds, they were pretty benign, but the similarity didn't sit well in my crop.

I fiddled with my claws, still with closed eyes.

I should... probably go help the mortals. Nalestrasza' revised predictions, what with Algalon, that she'd given me last night included the last of the cultists sending earth elementals and ascendants through the soil and behind our lines, along with the Legion raining infernal and abyssals, while we at the front lines had to contend with the shock troops; pit lords, faceless and the likes, while our air forces battled above.

I opened my eyes and pulled myself onto all fours, fighting back the numbness of sleep that had begun to creep up on me, filling my limbs with lead and cotton. I walked through the Circle of Life, patches of vibrant flowers and vine-covered trees surrounding me, with peaceful, swaying grass in between. As I watched, Malfurion Stormrage stood before one of the patches, right hand lowered and left hand elevated, nature magic flowing from him. I analyzed the spell even as he cast it, looking into the command runes he wove together. It required a high amount of power, and had a target-search, intelligence imbuing...

He finished the spell before I could finish looking at it, and the entire oasis before him sprouted _legs_ and _arms _and _faces,_ treants, ancients and flowers pulling their roots from the soil. They bowed quickly to Malfurion, before heading to the front lines. The night elf sagged, falling onto one knee with a fist on the ground. I ran over to him.

"Malfurion, are you alright?" I asked, casting a rejuvenation spell on him. The master druid got back onto his feet and turned around slowly, glowing eyes meeting mine.

"Yes," he said coldly. "I am fine, dragon. Thank you." He turned around, and with a flash of smoke turned into a crow, then flew away.

I sighed. Malfurion never _was_ comfortable around my Flight. He was old, and the wounds were still fresh by his standards. I still wished he would come around. At least the other Flights did their best not to _show_ they were uncomfortable around us, and the Bronze had always treated us kindly; that should be a calling card to everyone else, shouldn't it? "You're welcome," I muttered to myself once he was out of earplate-shot.

I kept up my walk through the Circle of Life. Every now and then I saw a group of druids struggling to perform what Malfurion did, and lent them my magic to aid them. While I knew practically nothing of nature magic, it was easy to see the focus of power and surge my own mana there, letting them focus more on the spell itself and less on the mana cost. The thanks I got were few and far between, most of them from tauren druids. I kept marching forward, but stopped when I heard the flapping of wings settle next to me.

"Hey," said Murdonia. I stopped, let her come up to my right, before we both started walking.

"Hey," I returned. Murdonia had changed since I last saw her. Pallasion's first mate, upon growing up fully, originally had pure purple scales, like glittering amethysts along her body, that I was quite jealous of. Not like I would ever admit it, of course. But since then, they'd darkened, been torn off in several places to reveal the flesh beneath, her tail club was missing some spikes, and it looked like she had sand burns along the back of her neck. "You look like a mess."

She chuffed. "Tell me about it. Possessed bronzes, I tell you. Never knew sand could hurt so much."

"How long do you think we can hold the Circle?"

"Not long enough," she said bitterly. She scratched the ground with her foreclaws angrily. "To be honest, I think we're gonna crumble under this assault. Like parchment."

I grimaced, licking my fangs. "That's the spirit."

"Well, what do you think? As bottle-necked as the entrance is, there are mountain passes that we can not hope to cover. The Legion's casters can take the high ground there and flank us, and then the fel wyrms can strafe with their mist, and boom! That's that."

"Well, what about the Aspects?"

She scoffed. "The Aspects are busy with that fel wyrm leader. I've seen him fight, you know. He moves too fast, he's as powerful as Kil'jaeden, he is _good._ If dear brother hadn't thought to armor himself and the other Aspects, they'd all be dead by now."

"Lovely thought," I mused. "Why can't we help them?" The Watchers couldn't help, since they were busy with the increasing number of raids the Legion was conducting. Where they got those soldiers, I didn't know, but the Watchers were needed anyhow, as was Algalon.

"We're a little busy up there, you know," my clutch-mate said snidely. "Trust me, if I could spare the energy, I would. But I can't, so I don't." Murdonia nestled next to me and clapped my back with her left wing. "Take care, Selriona. Wouldn't want _you_ getting raised. You'd probably blackout the Aspects."

I shuddered at the thought. The blackout was a spell I'd taught myself in the cataclysm. While I was best at it (disregarding Verthelion), I wasn't the first; my adoptive broodmother Valiona had used it herself long ago. A spell that absorbed healing, on the Aspects, in these circumstances? That would be catastrophic.

I swallowed. "I'll just have to not die then." I looked back at Murdonia, locking my green eyes with her cyan ones. "What do you think of... of Wrathion?" The black dragon's name tasted like ashes on my tongue. Even just his namesake was off-putting. Wrath. The sole living black dragon, come to bring his wrath against those who replaced his Flight? Anger clenched my heart. Let him try.

Murdonia also scowled. "I don't know. I mean, a black dragon? You saw what _they _were like last time. You fought their leader. We both saw _him_ fly over us and torch Azeroth. But Wrathion..."

"He's not corrupt," I said for her. "If he was, we could see it."

"You don't have to be corrupt to be evil, though. If I were him, I'd hold a big grudge against us. I mean, who are we to take over their spot? What makes us so deserving?"

I grimaced. "Regardless, he's on our side for the time being. He'd be stupid not to. Once this is over, though..."

"He'll be trouble," Murdonia finished. We both paused, both in walking and in talking. After a few minutes she picked the conversation back up. "Where the fuck did he even come from? I thought the Black Flight was extinct."

I shrugged my wings. "No clue. Guess we should be thankful, though. That lava's nasty stuff."

"It's good that the Legion and the Cult are the ones getting hit by it, not us."

"Yeah." I swung my tail behind me. "Well, guessing you have things to do?"

"Yep. I'd better go see if my idiot brother forgot to get his armor retightened." She looked at me sadly. "I wish we had more time to talk, but, you know. The war." With those parting words, Murdonia took off into the air, with me looking after her enviously.

I closed my eyes, lifting my head up and sniffing deeply. The air smelled of more ashes than before. The faint taste of blood. Tell tale signs that this battle was turning against us rapidly. Murdonia was right. Our numbers were dwindling, while the Legion's were neverending. While it didn't matter _too_ much, since our only goal was to hold out long enough to get Sargeras in position to fry, it would make rebuilding afterwards a... what was the mortal saying? A bitch.

I grimaced at that thought. Rebuilding would not be fun. We'd have to, of course. We couldn't just let the damage lay around untouched. I doubted Grim Batol would get anything worse than a scrape, but Wyrmrest would have to be rebuilt. Of course, thinking about Wyrmrest made me think about how it was destroyed, which made me thank about how Sargeras had murdered my brood.

Dark blue fire puffed out of my nostrils. He'd get his soon enough.

I walked over to another group of druids and aided them. Then I saw a group of what appeared to be shamans, standing around a boulder embedded in the ground. I saw down a small distance from them and waited until they lowered their hands in exhaustion.

"Need help?" I asked. Not like I knew what they were doing.

A male orc answered me. "We are trying to lift that out. It's needed for the catapults."

"Why didn't you just say so?" I asked, standing back up. As I padded over to them, the mortals respectfully moved away. Then I reared up and gripped the drake-sized boulder with both forelegs, effortlessly rolling it out of the soil. I gave the shamans a wry smile.

The orc sputtered, horribly flustered, before getting a hold of himself again. "We loosened it for you." I chuckled, as did several of his friends, before looking at the rest of the Circle of Life.

There was a lot to do.

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><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<strong>


	47. Chapter 47:Family Reunion

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Massive thanks to dharak for being my beta.**

**Chapter published 6/27/13**

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><p><span>Ialion<span>

Oh, what a glorious morning it is!

But what morning isn't glorious, to be in the service of Lord Sargeras? I could barely imagine how I'd lived before dying, how I'd gotten by without his shadow over me, over all the cosmos. The wonders he'd shown me dwarfed the ones I'd seen on this pitiful world, similarly to how his power dwarfed mine. He'd shown to me the wonders and the secrets of the cosmos, of the universe. White dwarfs colliding, dark matter clouds, the arrangement of the Violet Lady, Crucible of Sargeras, and Circlet of the Titans, the last two being massive spiral galaxies, while the first was a tiny spiral next to the Circlet. Even Sargeras didn't know what was in the Crucible, though. How foolish these order-lovers were! Naming a galaxy after Sargeras even though nobody had ever been there! They deserved to die for their insolence!

I threw back my head and roared to the cloudy, chilly skies. What glory it is to not fear the cold, to feel no burns or chills. Around me, my loyal subjects repeated my actions, filling the air with our ghastly wails. We flew to battle, and what a battle it would be, fighting my deluded, living counterparts as they fought for something so fragile, so weak.

Order, pah! Do they know nothing of entropy? Of thermodynamics? Fighting for order simply would make chaos fall upon them all the sooner! They should know that, they should lay down and _die!_

_'Detheroc, we are in position. Began the ground assault at your leisure,'_ I transmitted to the leader of the ground forces.

_'Understood, Ialion. Lets finish this.' _A pause, during which he probably sent the signal to attack. Then, in my mind again, _'For Lord Sargeras!'_

_'For Lord Sargeras!__'_ I roared telepathically to all my followers, who all returned to battle cry.

_'Krazasztrasz, take your forces and hide in the clouds! Guide any stray infernals, then drop down on my mark!'_

_'By your will, Ialion.' _With that, a couple hundred fel wyrms and fel drakes lifted up into the air, and vanished into the cloud cover, leaving me with my own forces, heading east, our shadow eclipsing the ground forces. Already, I could hear the hissing of infernal and abysmal meteors through the air, briefly lighting up the sky with emerald and orange before vanishing into the sky, to land further in and wreak glorious, glorious havoc.

Before too long, I could see the barricade, the land forces meeting the doomed defensive position. Already, the massive assault began, spells and arrows flying across both sides. However, I couldn't spend any longer observing them. A swarm of winged reptiles approached from ahead, with a dozen enormous gunships firing their cannons, and gryphon riders backing them up.

_'Break off, get into formation. Engage at will,'_ I told the wyrms not with Krazastrasz.

Following my own advice, I cracked open my jaws and called upon who I once was, firing a large boulder of twilight fire right in front of me. The dragons swerved out of the way, lest the flames cling to them, but one Blue wasn't quick enough. He dropped like a stone.

My attack began the barrage. A hailstorm of attacks rained upon us from the approaching dragons, but we either rolled out of the way or, when reflexes failed, used our magic to deflect the attacks. I soon found my targets; five very large dragons, covered in metal.

_'Drop!'_ I shouted to Krazastrasz as I beelined the Aspects. Hundreds of my kin fell from the clouds, startling the dragons. Before long, the entire scene above the ground battle had turned to havoc, none of the enemy able to coordinate. Lovely, _delicious_ havoc, but I paid it no attention.

With a roar, I slammed into Kalecgos's chest, utilizing my superior speed and maneuverability. A moment later, an arc of fire shot towards me, but I flipped backwards to avoid Alexstrasza's attack and fired a glob of fel mist at her. Predictably, she blew it away with a wing. Telekinetically, I took control of the glob of mist and pushed it towards Nozdormu, who simply vanished from sight.

I winged backwards to avoid a sizzling arc of twilight lightning, and then barrel rolled away from a stream of poison. The poison breath formed floating emerald orbs where it passed, which began to home in on me.

_Well, that's a new one._

Still, it wouldn't make a difference. With speed and grace the Aspects could never hope to match, I winged over to Alexstrasza and landed on her back, placing my bony claws under her back plates and pulling up hard, once, twice...

Before I could do anything else, I was forced to jump up as a twin stream of ice and arcane blew past me, halting my assault on the Red Aspect's armor. My wings grew heavy as yellow light shimmered around them, but I gritted my fangs and drew strength from the twilight realm to push past it. While I couldn't sink into the twilight realm on my own, not anymore, I still had a few tricks...

Quickly focusing on my magic, quickly before Kalecgos could counterspell me, I summoned several crackling orbs of twilight energy around me. They orbited me like the moons of this wretched world, arcing dark lightning into the nearest Aspect. It wasn't much, but it would distract them.

A barrage of shadow bolts flew past me, and I whirled around, right into a ruby fireball. The impact jarred me and charred some of my bones black, but I ignored the superficial pain and burned away a lot of Alexstrasza's mana. She roared in pain, and in the time it took Ysera to heal the damage done to her soul, I was before Nozdormu.

The Bronze Aspect didn't react quick enough - oh the delicious irony! - and I managed to sink my razor fangs into his armored throat. I pulled as hard as I could, cackling around my jawful as I felt something heave. Before I could fully rip off the armor and go for the Timeless One's throat, my memory... _warped._ I saw myself going backwards, my cackle returning to my throat as I pushed Nozdormu's amber armor back into place before falling off of him. The spell cleared, and I roared in fury at having my progress undone. Even my twilight orbs faded.

I twisted away from the approaching poison orbs just in time. I craned my head in all directions, rivers of dominating fel mist spewing from me and forcing the Aspects to take cover. I stopped when I felt I'd put enough distance between us...

Suddenly, Verthelion materialized before me and knocked me aside with his paws. I tumbled to the side, and he reappeared again, this time surfacing behind me and hitting me with the spiked club on his tail, nearly shattering a rib. With a growl I whipped myself around and grabbed the Aspect's armored tail when it came for another slam. He pulled it away, but I had one more trump card to distract him.

"Hello, father!" I said cheerfully. His glowing eyes widened, and that was all the time I needed to grab hold of his tail. With a grunt of effort I spun around and tossed Verthelion into Alexstrasza, sending both Aspects spiraling in a tangled mess of wings and claws.

I stopped flapping my wings and dropped straight down, avoiding the frost bomb that crashed into the spot I'd been in a moment before. I pulled upwards from the dive, twisted around to send one of Nozdormu's arcane bolts sailing harmlessly through the gaps in my bones, and raked my claws across Kalecgos's face. The armor protected him, but reflex made him rear backwards, exposing the underbelly for me.

_Perfect._

Like a cannonball I dove at the armored stomach, latching onto it. With a surge of power, I conducted twilight lightning across the metal and into Kalecgos's body. He roared in agony for several seconds, after which I was forced to stop the assault and retreat to a safe distance. His wings flapped unevenly, and he _almost_ fell down, if it weren't for a recovered Alexstrasza and Verthelion both healing him.

I snarled, but instead of going right for another attack, ascended into the cloud cover.

Almost instinctively, I dodged fireballs, poison blasts, frost bolts, and sand breaths. I chose my target, pulled my wings into my body, and _dove._

I smashed into Ysera full force, the shear momentum catching one of the previously-damaged plates on her back and ripping it off, the metal plummeting to the battlefield below.

I roared in victory and sailed back up, avoiding a barrage of assaults. The Green Aspect's sleeping mist washed over me, but it had no effect on the dead.

I continued the fight, twisting my body and flying expertly to avoid the hailstorm of magic the Aspects unleashed upon me, striking them whenever I could, even if the effect vanished against their armor. However, I managed to engulf the patch of exposed scales on Ysera's back in twilight flame, which forced Verthelion to waste precious time draining it. I fought through Kalecgos's ice and Nozdormu's slowing, which was even harder to do so when he accelerated his allies.

But I'd trained for this all my undeath. This was my purpose. And I was _good_ at it. As the battle passed, with my armies and theirs both laying the occasional strafe over the land armies, they began to tire, whereas we did not. Slowly, outnumbered as we were, we started to kill dragons, and the ground forces began to break through the entrenched position. In what little spare time I had, I sent black bolts of lightning down, striking the corpses of fallen dragons. Their flesh melted away, their wills dissolved, and I commanded them back into the air.

I spun, I dove, I twisted. The Aspects released everything they had at me; orbs of blue fire swirled around me, heavy roots formed on my bones and tried to weigh me down. Caustic poison burned at my bones and time warps rewound me a few seconds, just in time for a frigid blizzard to be called down around me. However, for every strike the Aspects scored, I scored ten.

I weakened the Twilight Aspect's will with a breath, I stabbed my horns into Kalecgos's flank. I scored no hits on Nozdormu, but I repeatedly ignited Ysera's vulnerable scales and concussed Alexstrasza through her helm. The passage of time blurred, time had no meaning up here, doing what I was meant to do...

Suddenly, after maybe an hour of prolonged fighting, the air changed. I took a quick glance at the rest of my armies, their shifted positions. Something... didn't feel right. An aura filled the air. It was... odd. Familiarly chaotic, but colder than the Blue Aspect's magic. A direct contrast to Alexstrasza's magic. It was all too similar, nay, identical to the magic animating me. But what...

From the clouds above us, hundreds of fel wyrms poured from the skies to join the assault, and I grinned in delight. Reinforcements! I didn't know how; Lord Sargeras must have ressurected more in Dragonblight than he'd let on. Now the Aspects would pay.

_'Newcomers,' _I thought to them. _'Aid me against the Aspects. Swarm Alexstrasza!'_

When the fel wyrms didn't obey me, I mentally raged at the insubordination. _'Did you hear me? I said ACH!'_

My thoughts cut off with a cry of pain as the front dozen of the arriving fel wyrms opened their mouths, a torrential rain of ice shards slamming into me. The sheer momentum tossed me out of the course I'd set for Nozdormu.

I roared to the sky. "Treason!" I fixed the fel wyrms with a glare, and... and...

No, that couldn't be right. Their eyes glowed with a brilliant yellow glare, like molten rock, and their chest cavities were filled with freezing, icy blue mist. From their backs and paws dangled tiny creatures I'd only seen in books back when I had been alive and deluded. Ghouls, vargul, abominations...

Before I could completely piece together the puzzle, a frigid onslaught from the not-fel wyrms rammed into me, supercooling my bones and turning them much, _much_ more brittle than normal. That was all it took for the Aspects' combined blasts to vaporize my left wing.

There was no real pain, I was above that, but the knowledge that I'd been grounded made me roar in fury, even as I began to drop. With my right wing, I steered myself towards the battle, intent on taking as many order-lovers with me as I could, but my balance failed me and I veered off to the southern mountain range. I tried to correct my course, but it was too late. I lost sight of the Aspects, of the not-fel wyrms, of my armies and the ground battle. The rocks rose up around me, and I slammed down with enough force to crack my left foreleg, which prompted me to roar again.

Growling, I reached into my telepathic link. _'Detheroc!'_

_'What is it, Ialion?'_

_'Frost wyrms have arrived! They've grounded me, and are tearing the armies to shreds, not to mention depositing the fucking undead!'_

_'What?! WHY were we not informed by the satellites?!'_

_'Oh, I don't know,'_ I told the dreadlord sardonically, trying to flex my nonexistent left wing to ward off the phantom sensations. _'But it may have something to do with a planet-sized cloud of sulfur dioxide!'_

The resulting stream of Demonic swears would've made me blush furiously, had I still any blood.

_'Well, what do you suggest we do, Ialion?' _he asked at last.

_'Full retreat! I'm grounded, I can't handle the Aspects, we're now outnumbered thanks to the undead, this has just taken a turn for the worst. I'm ordering my forces to fall back, if you're smart you'll do the same.' _Without waiting for his response, I focused my telepathy on my kin. _'Fall back! Fall back, NOW! Rsmera, when you arrive in Hyjal with Lord Sargeras, be very careful. Frost wyrms have for some reason joined the enemy. Avoid them if you can, but remember speed is priority.'_

_'Of course, sir,' _the undead Green replied. _'Are you alright?'_

_'I'll be fine, just need to find my way out of these mountains. Repeat, all of you, FALL BACK!'_ I closed off my telepathy and looked around, seeking a way to get back to the base.

Before I could move much, I detected movement out of the corner of my eyes. Faster than I could react, a wall of deep purple scales slammed into me, forcing my chilled bones to the stony ground. For a while we fought each other, claws meeting claws blindly. I was more than alarmed when my opponent's claws managed to rip shards of bone out of me. Was I really so fragile now?

Finally, I brought my hind legs up and kicked them in the stomach, forcing them off me. I got to my claws and eyed my enemy carefully.

I recognized her, from some far off memory. Of darkness surrounding me in a tight cocoon, a cavern filled with beings like me...

"Hello, _mother,_" I said distastefully, secretly gathering mist in the back of my throat.

She paused, narrowed her eyes, then growled. "Ialion. Why didn't I figure it out sooner?"

"Well, Nalestrasza always _was_ the brains," I taunted. Almost there, just a little more mist...

She frowned, then bared her razor sharp fangs at me, unsheathing her tusks with a _shwing_. "Don't worry Ialion. You won't have to suffer much longer."

I barked a laugh. "Oh mother, you amuse me so much. Come now. We can be friends." I opened my jaws wide and exhaled a heavy stream of mind-warping mist over Selriona. She vanished inside the sickly green plume, and when I stopped the onslaught she didn't reappear for several seconds. "Honest."

When it cleared, she was looking down at the ground, dazed. Had I still the muscles, I would've smiled. There, that's perfect! I can use her as leverage against Verthelion.

"Listen up, we're going back to the Legion base. Don't worry, you're with me - "

I ducked down quickly, a dark blue fireball whizzing past my crest. The glow of my eyes flickered. How did she resist the mist?

I tucked and rolled to the side, avoiding an unusually hot stream of fire. I found myself having to dance around as my broodmother pelted me with blasts. And, being the magical savant she was, _of course_ the blasts split into dozens of tiny fireballs mid-flight to pepper the entire area.

I growled, and spat a blast of twilight fire at her. Sure enough, she sunk into the twilight realm, my fireball leaving a crater in the stone behind her. I waited the appropriate length of time, then spun around just as she reappeared, reared on her hind legs, forelegs extended. I raised my bony claws and met her metallic ones, _scraping _our natural weapons together. Before she could do anything else, I dropped back, letting her body weight send her down on all fours, unbalanced. In that span, I retaliated by lunging for her throat, skull wide open. Sadly, however quick I was, her magic was quicker, and I found my fangs scraping on a condensed wall of shadow magic. I growled low, but I didn't let it deter me.

However skilled she may have been with magic, my raw power far surpassed her, and I'd trained in battle all my undeath. I had been blessed by Sargeras, I'd gone claw to claw with the Aspects themselves!

A single arc of twilight lightning from my remaining wing stripped away her defenses. Her pupils slitted further in surprise, and I slammed my head into hers, interrupting the spell and sending her down. Before I could capitalize on dazing her, she vanished into swirls of violet mist.

I growled, ready for her reappearance. However weak my former Flight was compared to the chosen dragons of Sargeras, they were _very_ good at hitting and running.

She reappeared a short distance from me and shot a fireball at me. I wove to the side and retaliated with a blast of mist, but she was already gone. I kept a wall to my back, so that she couldn't materialize behind me.

She formed again, this time in a human form. She slammed both palms to the ground, which ignited, causing purple fires to start spreading towards me in a line. Then, as my lightning arced out from my horns, she was gone again. I took to the air to escape the approaching fire... only to slam back on my left side, forgetting my recent amputation. One of my ribs outright shattered from the impact. On the plus side, I'd avoided those flames. But I'd taken damage nonetheless.

It was a fierce battle, but it wasn't like a long drawn out siege, us blocking and dodging and breathing flames; she'd have died in an instant that way. Selriona would pop out of the twilight realm and cast a spell, or breathe fire, or strike me with an appendage, then vanish again, while I tried to predict her patterns and have a blast ready for her. My mist didn't seem to do anything to her, which I _could not_ understand. _WHY WASN'T IT CONTROLLING HER?!_

However, while she scored far more hits than I did, hers were also much weaker than mine. My claws, powered by magical strength, tore through her scales and flesh like wet parchment, leaving deep wounds. I didn't bother going for her wings, since she was already grounded, and so resorted to going for center-mass. I nearly tore her throat out, I left deep gashes in her tail. She healed what she could with her formidable magic, but magic only goes so far.

I froze, sitting on my skeletal hips. Wait one second, two seconds...

Selriona reappeared to my right, her fangs snapping out to get me. I raised my right wing to stab the talon into her eyes, but she vanished just before reaching me. A moment later, she reappeared to my left with the same attack, but I was ready. I stabbed my other wing's talon into her eyes -

- and had three ribs bitten off as a result, disrupting the necromatic magic animating me. I roared in surprise, flipping back through the air to get away from her twilight fire breath. Damn it all, I thought I still had my wing! I could still feel it, still command it, after all...

"Won't be long now, son," she hissed after a nasty fireball had taken off my left horn. I was starting to grow desperate. Failure was not an option. I couldn't fail my Lord. To do so would be a fate worse than death!

I sank my claws into her stomach, making her roar in agony as I tore them back out, lacerating her. I jumped back, my augmented strength letting me go higher without my wings. Calling on some magic taught to me by Sargeras, I extended invisible, mental ropes from my maw and wrapped them around Selriona. I tugged my head to the side, and she went flying, smashing into the hillside. I pulled her back and slammed her again, with a _crack._ Before I could do so again, she was gone, reappearing after a few seconds. I cackled. Her right horn was gone, snapped off near the base.

My cackling stopped when dark magic wrapped around me, blacking out all light. I quickly called my own powerful magic to dispel it.

Big mistake.

A shadow nova exploded outwards from my chest cavity, blowing off more chilled ribs. I roared in pain and stumbled back, my animating magic disrupted even more. My movements were shaky, almost as if moving through water. A river of twilight fire washed over me, turning the world blue. The heat behind the shadowy flames made my bones ache and tremble.

I growled and raised a powerful shadow shell around myself, and exhaled a thick curtain of my mist. I knew it wouldn't affect my broodmother, but it _would_ obscure me from her vision. And gifted as I was, I could see better than her.

Just as I expected, I felt the change in pressure as air was suddenly displaced, and sent a sizzling beam of lightning in that direction. The roar of pain and whoosh of air rushing in to fill a void was all too rewarding. Not willing to let her lock down on my position, I moved to another section of the mountains, ready for her next appearance.

Sadly, a few wing flaps cleared away the mist, and I could practically _feel_ her magic working on me, finding holes in my shielding spell and ripping it to shreds in moments, the backlash of energy throwing me high into the air. When I landed, my still-chilled bones cracked.

I lost all motion in my left foreleg.

I growled. How much longer would that blasted cold remain?

In that moment of anger at the cosmos, Selriona slammed into me, pinning me to my back. She raised her metal-encased left claws and slashed them, shattering my right forepaw into splinters, prompting me to roar as my animating magic faded even more. I tried to push her off with the stump of my right foreleg, but I'd weakened too much.

_Crack._ My hind legs. _Crack._ Her tail club slamming into my tail, nearly severing it, and then she stepped off.

I tried to right myself, but not only was I too amputated to do so, I'd taken too many hits. The necromatic magic flowing through me was ruined, forming knots, clots, tangles in my bones, restricting the flow of magic to some places while giving too much to others.

Not without cost, though. Selriona was a right mess. I'd broken off one of her horns, and given her vicious lacerations. Even now, the grass gently hissed and decayed as her purple blood touched it, sterilizing the dirt. She panted heavily, moving over to me.

"I am sorry for this, Ialion," she said. She reared up, jaws open. I heard a gurgling noise coming from the depths of her body, purple light glowing at the back of her throat. I tried to move, use my magic, but she'd disrupted me too much. The fight against the Aspects prior hadn't helped things, nor had my amputation and supercooling.

_'Lord Sargeras,' _I thought sadly. _'I am... so sorry.'_

I barely even felt the fireball as it crushed my skull, ending the flow of reanimating magic. Everything became so dark...

... and everything became so clear.

* * *

><p><span>Amanthe<span>

Scourge.

_Everywhere._

For a long time I thought I was going to die. The absolute last thing I'd expected was for the fucking undead to start marching around the World Tree. The _smell _had startled me from my restless slumber, and from then on my throat refused to unclench. The undead. I hadn't seen the undead in over three hundred years, why were they coming back now?

My mind's eye flashed to a city, crumbling around me as a traitor prince slew his father, ravaging undead killing all they could see. My mother...

I shook myself out of the memory. It didn't matter, it had been a long, long time ago. And now, for some reason, they were here, _helping_ us.

The troll next to me, just off the battlefield, was busy relegating the story to me.

"So there we were, mon. Them dragons and dead dragons were fighting above us. Ah was so afraid that at any moment one o' 'em would come down, breathe all over us ya know?" Without waiting for me to respond he leaned back, clutching his mangled left arm, groaning in pain. "Well, dis giant pit lord was getting ready ta breathe fire all over us, when wouldn't you know it, he turned inta ice!"

"_Into_ ice?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Close enough. Turned blue, stopped movin'. Next cannonball, and blam! Bloody demon chunks, its soul gettin' absorbed by one o' dem blue draggy crystals. Den we get ghouls and floating skeletons and whatnot dropping down on us and ripping dem demons apart! They ran pretty quick."

"What are the undead doing _helping_ us?"

He shrugged the one arm that could. "I dunno, but I sure as hells ain't complainin', mon! We might just hold dis mountain after all!"

"Don't be so sure," I said. I flexed an arm, wincing as the raw flesh there moved. My burns had healed splendidly under the healing salves of the night elves, and I'd be able to fight before long, but it still hurt. "Remember, Sargeras is still due to arrive in three days, and, however much of a powerhouse they are, I doubt even the Scourge can hold him back."

"Bah, don't worry about it. Now dat dat quick fel wyrm's done fo, the Aspect have nothin' to hold dem back."

That's right. Selriona had told me telepathically she'd killed Ialion, and asked me to send for help since she was injured. Right now, she'd be resting at the same place all injured dragons went, recovering from her deep wounds. If the fel wyrms were leaderless...

But why were the _undead_ here of all things? I needed an answer. And sitting there would give me none. I settled my gaze on a distant guardian of Hyjal, and focused a bit of my shadow magic onto them, in a rather noninvasive spell.

Immediately, I saw the world through their eyes, slightly blurred. But that didn't matter. Through his eyes, I saw someone else, closer to the World Tree base, and jumped my magic over to them. I kept hopping, until I found my prize. Taking care to make this next jump as subtle as I possibly could, so that nobody could possibly detect it, I leaped over to the eyes of General Vajarn, my vision instantly sharpening and distorting with his draconic sight.

It was a meeting between the mortal representatives, the Aspects, the generals, Ellemayne the last Kingslayer, and a tall skeletal mage with blue and black rags for clothes and blazing yellow eye sockets. Off to the side, Algalon stood, living up to his title. In the middle was a map of Mount Hyjal.

"You called for us, _undead?_" Alexstrasza asked, her armor accentuating the steel in her voice.

"Indeed, I did," the skeleton rasped. "Forgive me if my motions are ungainly, it's been long since I have directly controlled a minion."

_What was going on? Controlled? Was there another Lich King?_

The moment I thought that, each of the five Aspects snapped their glowing eyes over to Vajarn, to me.

"What?" the dragonspawn general asked nervously.

After a few moments, their gazes returned to the skeleton. "Nothing," Verthelion said slowly. "Thought we _saw_ something."

They knew! Damn it all, I should've known better than to think I could hide my magic from not one, but five Aspects. Still, the fact that the meeting continued meant they also knew who I was and trusted my motives to be innocent.

"Anyhow," Ysera continued. "You must understand, undead, that while your assistance is much appreciated and could not have arrived at a better time, your arrival itself raises many questions. For one thing, it has been well established that the undead are without ruler, and such, brain dead. Since neither appear to be the case anymore, it leads us to ask who are you? A necromancer? A lich who retained will, biding his time?"

The skeleton's jaw quivered, a raspy chuckle escaping its bones. "Neither has ever been the case. The undead without leader would be worse than they ever were under the command of Arthas." Back in the injured camp, my muscles tightened at that _traitor's_ name. "Unchecked, unchained, you understand."

"But then - " asked the Argent Crusade's representative.

The skeleton held up a bony hand. "I'm _getting_ to that. Many of you may not know me, but I suppose I should introduce myself." The skeleton bowed. "I, that is the person controlling this body, am Bolvar Fordragon. At your service, Aspects." Ellemayne looked very, _very_ uncomfortable.

The resulting silence was suffocating. I felt my jaws moving as Vajarn spoke. "What? Bolvar Fordragon was supposed to have died when the Lich King was slain."

The skeleton rasped a laugh. "Oh no, I'm very much still here. Undead, in a sense, but still here. I believe I have Her Majesty the Dragonqueen to thank for that. You remember me, right? Back at the Wrathgate?"

Alexstrasza nodded. "Yes, I do. I am deeply sorry for - "

"Ah, pay it no mind. It all turned out for the best." Abruptly the skeleton shook its head. "Oh, forgive me for being so straightforward. Three hundred years of isolation does no good to one's social skills." He fixed Ellemayne with a look. "After Arthas met his much belayed end, it fell to me to jail the damned. Ellemayne and her guild were present, but I made Tirion and them swear to have _nobody_ know. I had to be dead, the Scourge had to be leaderless for fear to end. I hope you can forgive me for that."

"I believe we can. But then what have you been doing all this time?" Kalecgos asked.

He shrugged. "Paralyzing the Scourge, stargazing from my 'throne', playing idle mental games with myself, and drowning out the screaming of a hundred thousand damned souls. Not much."

"Why did it take your forces so long to arrive?" asked Go'el the Second.

"Well, I've noticed something of a curiosity in the skies. New stars, and not only that, they _move _through the night, far more rapidly than even planets. First one, then two, then many. Naturally, for eighty years I had no idea what they were, but with the recent _apocalypse _I figured it out. You're not going to like it."

"Please tell us regardless," Malfurion said. "If Tirion entrusted you with the control of the Scourge, I feel we can entrust you with this information."

"Satellites. The Burning Legion has, for some time now, been launching orbital craft to Azeroth. Their function is likely to observe; they've been watching us all for decades. That's what I would do, with their resources and technology. I had to hold back as long as I did so I could take them by surprise; erupting Un'goro caused the cloud to block their satellites, but it took time for the cloud to reach Northrend. They're blind now, so I could move in for the ambush." The skeleton tilted its skull to the side. "You _do_ have a plan regarding Sargeras, right? He's on his way; I can feel his magic all the way from Icecrown."

"Indeed we do, honored Bolvar Fordragon," Alexstrasza said. "Algalon the Observer plans to use a titan device to incinerate him and his armies once he is in position, and then we shall finish him off."

"Excellent. My frost wyrms shall keep the skies clear; thanks to my will, they are immune to the fel wyrms' breath, and hold every strength they have plus numbers. You have full aerial dominance now, and my ground troops are nothing to laugh at, either. Already, I have my liches opening portals back to Icecrown for reinforcements to pour through." Noticing everyone's look of apprehension, 'Bolvar' added on to his statement, "Relax, I shall not reanimate anybody without their express, personal permission."

Algalon spoke up for first time. "Arrival of reanimated organisms is highly preferable, increases ease of holding the World Tree until Former Pantheon Champion arrives. Watcher Mimiron is ready to activate the reorigination mechanism at any time. We should begin discussion of tactics, as to where Sargeras shall be likely to arrive."

"Indeed," Vajarn said, stepping to the map, flexing his wings. "And I already have an idea..."

At that point, my spell's duration expired, and I was once again laying down on a bedroll, healing from no-longer-second degree burns. Processing what I'd learned, I fell into a healing sleep.

* * *

><p>One day more.<p>

One day more until Sargeras arrived, and everything would come to its conclusion.

I didn't really know what to think. The undead were keeping the faceless and the demons at bay, rather successfully at that, letting the living rest and heal. I'd hoped I never had to see the Scourge again, but now that they were back, I was oddly tranquil about it. Perhaps the old wounds had healed? Perhaps because I'd known of Bolvar Fordragon long ago, and trusted him? Perhaps I was more afraid of the demons? Regardless, I didn't flinch each time a skeleton or zombie walked past me.

I'd healed up quite nicely, and was ready to fight. It had been decided that, since Sargeras's method of arrival was untrackable and unpredictable, we had no way of knowing what route he would take to the World Tree. He _could not_ be allowed close to the tree, so all flight-capable dragons, including the Aspects, were on heavy defense around the World Tree, lest he drain its power for himself.

Three main junctions had been chosen; the main entrance from the Circle of Life and the resulting path downwards to Nordrassil. A northeast route the came directly from Ulduar, but through the chilling area of Winterspring. And a southeast, roundabout path Sargeras would have to take if he wanted to minimize his cold exposure. Not that it wasn't already pretty cold, but Winterspring was another thing entirely. It was calculated that Sargeras would elect the more direct, northeast path, and ignore the thermal shock, so the Liberality Confederacy was posted there, as were a large number of other armies. And joy to the world, the guild had requested for me to come with them. I'd left an impression, it seemed, so my reward was to have a good chance of facing Sargeras. Yay.

That thought _terrified_ me. I'd only caught a glimpse of the Titan when saving the Liberality Confederacy's last four members, but even that had nearly broken my resolve, and just that short exposure to his aura drained half of my mana. The thought of facing him _again,_ not to run this time, but to fight, was almost too much to bear.

The plan was that each side would hold until Sargeras arrived. They would each have a messenger with them, which upon sighting the Dark Titan, would teleport back to the World Tree to alert Algalon, who would in turn alert Mimiron, and have the Watcher of Innovation fry the enemy. Algalon would then teleport with the other Watchers to the correct place, and the Aspects would fly over there, and once converged, kill Sargeras.

It wasn't a particularly relaxing plan, especially since most of it hinged on the world _not_ ending when the reorigination mechanism incinerated the final Old God. But we didn't have anything better; we _had_ to kill Sargeras.

I rubbed a hand along the wall of scales next to me. Far too many were missing, or in the wrong places. It would heal over time, the scales would shed and new ones would grow in place.

"This is it, isn't it?" Selriona groaned, her voice worn. Poor thing, she'd been absolutely mangled. She'd called for me to send help, but it had been hard for the dragons to find where she was. If Ysera hadn't found her when she did... I didn't want to think about that.

I sighed, leaning against her. She was lukewarm. "Yeah. This is it. You sure you'll be alright?" I glanced at one of her deep wounds. It had stopped bleeding and mostly healed, but Selriona would be criss-crossed with scars for the rest of her immortal life, not to mention the broken horn. She'd lost so much to the Legion...

"I'll be fine," she said. She raised her head from where it laid on the grass, looking around at the assembled drakes and dragons. "When the fighting starts, we're _all_ going into the twilight realm, and we're not leaving until someone from our Flight comes and gives us the all clear. We'll be safe."

"Alright. It's just, I don't know. The Scourge has got the demons and the faceless tied up fighting, so that's handled. But we have to handle Sargeras."

A wing with a patch of thinned membrane rested over me, pulling me against Selriona's side. Her voice dropped. "Amanthe, believe me. Believe me when I say you will be fine. You _can not_ die here. I promise you, I won't allow you to."

I tried to ignore the mysterious undertone to her voice. "Thank you." A lapse of silence, looking around at the setting sun. The days had been so busy. Healing, cleaning muskets, going over strategies, sparring to keep our reflexes up. All of it would be put to the test.

Soon. So very soon.

"Amanthe?"

"Hmm?"

"I'm scared.

"Yeah," I said, running a hand along her flank. "I'm scared too."

* * *

><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think!<strong>


	48. Chapter 48:Heavens Weep

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Huge thanks to my beta dharak for being my beta.**

**Chapter published 7/5/13. This is it.**

* * *

><p><span>Amanthe<span>

Full mana pool?

Check.

Daggers?

Check.

Twilight scale armor?

Check.

I took a deep breath, trying to steady my nerves. "It's to save the world," I told myself in a Draconic whisper. "It's to save the world."

I didn't know where the sun was, but the dragons, with their ridiculously accurate internal clocks, told me it was about halfway between early morning and high noon. Everyone had gotten a good night's sleep; we couldn't afford not to. And while tense, nervous energy flickered inside my muscles like liquid fire, a cold melancholy had fallen over the defense as a whole. The pale, slightly yellow clouds over us were even, giving no evidence to any sort of internal structure or depth. It was a frenzy to get ready, everyone rushing back and forth, trying to get one last mana potion, or one last fix-up to their armor. The airships had departed long ago, moving into position.

I took another deep breath as I reached my destination. Many of the wounded dragons had been healed by last-minute magic, mainly from the Red, Green, and Twilight Aspects' healing magic now that they needn't conserve their strength for Ialion.

Selriona cracked open a slitted eye from where she lay on her stomach. "Time?" she asked sleepily. Her deepest wounds had mended, little more than deep scars, but she'd lost a lot of blood beforehand. It turned out she had a very rare blood type; the only possible donor, one Kralion, had been injured as well. Of course, my friend was long out of the danger zone, but that didn't mean she was able to fight.

I nodded. "Time. In a few minutes, that is. I'm meeting up with Ellemayne and the others - " She winced at 'others' " - at the base of the World Tree, where we'll then be teleported. We've got the Skybreaker, the Orgrim's Hammer, and three other gunships covering the sky there, all ready to blast Sargeras's transport out of the sky."

"Mrr," she said. "That's good." She opened both eyes and raised her head, pulling her six tusks back in. "Remember what to do when you're facing him?"

"Be a coward," I said. "Don't try and stand against his attacks, fade in and out of the twilight realm as much as I have to. He so much as looks at me, I fade and reposition."

She chuffed happily. "Alright, sounds like you're set."

"I'm terrified."

She gave me a serious look, the sudden change of mood surprising me. "You're going up against the one and only Dark Titan. Devourer of Worlds, Lord of the Burning Legion and former champion of the Pantheon. If you weren't afraid, I'd be seriously concerned for your mental health." She flexed her shredded wing against the ground. "Verthelion dropped by earlier, you know."

"He did?"

"Yeah, he asked me to tell you to stop peeping on him, whatever that means. Know what he meant by that?"

I blushed, but I hoped that Selriona wouldn't see under my armor. "Not a clue," I said with as much seriousness as I could. "Well, I'm off. Just wanted to say goodbye in case this is, you know..."

Selriona looked down. "You'll be fine," she said quietly. "I know you'll be fine." She looked back up. "Amanthe, I'm in no fit shape to go help. Even if I were, I'd be on 'last stand' duty around the World Tree. But let me give you something." She tried to rise to all fours, but dropped down halfway up. "Um," she said sheepishly. "Can you, um, come here? You need to be close for this to work."

"Um, okay?" I said, walking until I was just next to her enormous head.

"Alright, here we go." She opened her mouth, letting me see past the fangs into the depths of her throat. A purple light started glowing in the depths of her body, but there was none of the gurgling that detailed fire being summoned.

"Um, Selriona?" I asked nervously. Suddenly, after she'd finished her casting, I was drenched in purple light. I grunted, a sudden force grabbing my arms and spreading them out, forcing me to grit my teeth as what felt like a dozen lightning bolts surged through my body. It continued for several seconds until the power and violet glow around my body stopped, letting go of my limbs. I stumbled back, clutching my heart, blinking stars out of my eyes.

Selriona dropped her head down, eyelids shut. "There," she murmured as if in a dream. "Twilight essence, linked you to realm. Draw strength passively, replenish mana, greater cast speed. Absorbs shadow energy. Between that and armor, nearly invulnerable to Titan dark magic. Careful though." She groaned. "Now I sleep."

I wanted to say more, but it soon became clear that she was right. I smiled softly to myself, flexing my fingers. "You won't need to sleep for months once this is over, all the sleep you're getting now." I looked back at myself. I took the twilight scale glove off my right hand. There was no visual indication of the blessing she'd given me, but I could _feel_ it. I could feel the twilight realm surrounding me at all points, like I could just reach out and touch it. Casting a shield on myself as a test, I was happy to notice that it did, in fact, rapidly replenish the tiny bit of lost mana from the spell.

I'd need it. I looked towards the north, where Sargeras was most likely to arrive on the back of a fel wyrm. Far off, I could see the tiny dots of airships. Satisfied I had everything I'd need, I headed out towards the area, where already the lion's share of the army was gathering and entrenching.

* * *

><p>"There's a lot of people here," I said.<p>

"Yeah, I know!" Mariel exclaimed. "Look, over by that trench! That's the fifty-second division of the Kor'kron. Only one left, so I hear. And over there's the Kirin Tor's greatest frost mages."

"That's nice Mariel, what are we going to do?" I asked, raising my voice so he could hear me over the rumbling of the airships above.

"Oh, we're gonna try and hold Sargeras in place if he arrives. You know, distract him until the cavalry arrives," he said, beaming.

"We're bait," I deadpanned.

The red-haired warlock pouted. "I detest that term. I prefer 'tactical diversion'."

"Bait," I repeated.

"What does it matter?" Droga said, butting into the conversation. "Either way, we have to fight Sargeras. He's got that shadow shell over his skin, we'll need to weaken that as much as possible before he's reoriginated."

"Well of course! But we need to make sure we know what we're doing!" Mariel said, raising his chin in pride. He dropped it soon after. "What exactly... _are_ we doing?"

"We're going over last-minute tactical revisions for Sargeras," said a new voice. We all turned around to see General Vajarn. He was in his armor, shadow magic flickering between his clawed hands, dark blue wings flexing behind his back and forming a canopy over Ellemayne and Katalyn. "You mentioned he can form some kind of vortex? We'll need to avoid that, for sure."

I raised a hand, as if I were in a school. "I can bring people into the twilight realm when he does that. I avoided it before like that; it's not nearly as strong in there," I mentioned.

"Good," Ellemayne said. "It's got a long cast time, so you should have no problem getting as many people in as possible. Just don't get touched by it."

"I won't." I looked at Katalyn and smirked. "Right, Katalyn? Won't get touched?"

The worgen snarled. "Watch it, priest."

Ellemayne quickly put herself between us, weaving under Vajarn's legs to do so. "Save it for the Titan," she said simply. "Come on, we've got formations to fill." She eyed Mariel harshly. "_No_ summoning demons."

"Yeah yeah, I got it," Mariel said, patting his felhound on the head. After a few seconds of us looking at him dumbly, he realized what he was doing. With a snap of his fingers, the demon _poofed_ out of existence with a cloud of purple mist. He turned around and walked towards the rest of the army. Shamans had shaped the earth into something like a bowl, ranged attackers arranged on the 'lip' of the bowl. Death knights from the Ebon Blade would combine all their strength to pull Sargeras into the middle, which was affectionately dubbed the 'kill zone'.

As everyone else started to head up the slope to the bowl, Ellemayne stopped me.

"Hey, Amanthe."

"Yeah?" I asked the mail-encased huntress.

"I just want you to know, for what it's worth, thank you for saving our asses in the Storm Peaks. As the senior member of the Liberality Confederacy, I'm making you an honorary member of our guild."

Blood rushed to my head, and I was thankful for my armor's helm. "Oh, no, you don't have to - "

She held up the hand not clutching her bow. "I'm not budging on this, Amanthe. You saved our asses, so just run with it, okay?"

Despite the burning under my skin, I nodded. "Alright. Thank you, really." I curtsied to her.

"Alright," Ellemayne said, walking up to me and clapping my back. "Let's go. We've got a Titan to kill."

"Indeed," I said with a nod, following after her, taking up position in between her and Mariel. Everyone's eyes were trained on the sky, ready. Watching. Waiting.

It seemed like hours passed. Maybe he hadn't come here? It was the most likely place for him to come, but that was marginal. Something like a 40-30-30 split. It was very likely we wouldn't even see the Dark Titan; in fact, it was more likely than not.

_Thud. Thud. Thud._ The cannons of the Orgrim's Hammer lit up the clouds. Everyone's eyes flickered to where it fired at as a screeching roar pierced the air. Looking closely, I could see the mangled skeleton of a dragon falling from the sky, trailing fel mists to where it crashed far out of range. Even harder to see, barely a speck in the clouds' lowest layer, was a red figure with its arms and legs spread out.

Vajarn was the first to speak, raising his voice above all else. "Send the messenger! Sargeras is here!"

Sargeras gave off a burst of flame, and began to rapidly descend, a cone of fire around him like a blazing meteor. I could hear the whistling of air as he dove, faster and faster, a trail of ruby flames behind him...

"Oh shit," I muttered, quickly praying to the light to bless myself and my allies with a fortitude of steel. A split second later, the Lord of the Burning Legion made touchdown, flipping over and landing feet first. Almost immediately I began to feel a tug on my very soul, but the wards inscribed into the air by the Kirin Tor soon neutralized it, even as Sargeras's shockwave blew me off my feet.

Two dozens tendrils of purple energy wrapped around the iron vrykul's waist. He stumbled once, then flew into the middle of the kill-zone. Right away, the group of melee warriors, including Droga and Katalyn, began assaulting him to weaken his barrier. Joining with the others, I quickly sunk into my shadowform, spoke a word of pain and cast a devouring plague, then began to _unload_ at Sargeras with twilight fireballs and mind blasts, faster than ever before, adding my power to the rain of attacks falling upon him.

He stumbled under the assault, but it didn't take long for Sargeras to find his footing. He took his broken, flaming sword, and spun around once. A dozen people were instantly sliced in half, Katalyn and Droga not among them, having dropped to the ground quick enough.

Sargeras laughed and, with a flick of his wrist, sent those still around him flying back, smashing into the bowl of earth. A moment later, the same rock flowed around them, chaining Katalyn and Droga to the ground.

"Ha," he said, his low voice chilling my blood. "You second attempt and still you do not learn." He clenched his left fist, still holding Gorribal in his right, and a cocoon of fire flared to life around him, nearly burning off my eyebrows. "I know not what you have planned, but you shall not live long enough to enact it!" He held Gorribal to the sky, the fires along his sword turning sickly green as he channeled more power into it.

My eyes widened. "Holy shit," I whispered, launching another twilight pyroblast at Sargeras, one that impacted uselessly against his flame shield. And with that, he unleashed a salvo of five felflame pyroblasts, each one finding their mark. A moment later, another round, and another, and another. One headed straight for me, and I barely sunk into the twilight realm in time to avoid it.

Sargeras lowered his sword, the fires turning back to normal. His shield remained, but our continued ranged assault broke it. A dozen fireballs flew into the air from where the shield broke, then split into two dozen, a hundred, two hundred, falling to the ground and glowing brightly, like flares. One of them fell right under Mariel. My eyes widened when he didn't move, and used my holy magic, shadowform falling apart.

The embers closest to Sargeras began to rupture, exploding in a geyser of flame, in 'rings'. I didn't know if I could manage the spell I had in mind, but I took a leap of faith and grabbed Mariel's very soul in a rope of the Light, pulling it, and its body, to me half a second before the ember exploded.

"Watch yourself!" I shouted to him.

"Right!" And with that, Mariel tackled me, rolling the two of us three meters away. Where was Ellemayne?

_BOOM!_

A wall of compressed air slammed into me, turning me upside down. Then, the ground underneath us heaved, throwing both of us far back, away from each other. I scrambled back to my feet, shadows engulfing me again. Sargeras stood in the middle of a small crater, where I'd been a moment ago, four trails of fire expanding outwards from his red-hot feet.

Before he could do anything else, I extended a shadow beam at his head, flaying his mind. It was like trying to tear down a brick wall with a toothbrush, but better than nothing.

Sargeras turned in what was vaguely my direction. Before I could sink into the twilight realm, a web of shadows extended from his left hand. They flew outwards, wrapping around everyone in their path, including me. I dug in my heels and fought the pressure throwing me to the right, even as everyone else caught went flying. My feet dug at the dirt, but finally, Sargeras stopped trying to throw me.

With a flicker of red, the Dark Titan was right before me, sword raised above his head.

With an incredibly dignified squeak, I sunk into the twilight realm, barely avoiding the meteoric strike. I scrambled backwards a 'safe' distance before resurfacing, finding that Sargeras was trying to decapitate a shaman, but was having a hard time on account of a dozen newly summoned water elementals chilling him.

I found Katalyn and Droga, still wrapped up by stone chains. Droga's were cracked, testament to his strength, but Katalyn was neatly bound. I focused my magic on her first, flickers of blue fire around her chains. In a moment, they shattered, and she scrambled out, slicing her daggers against Droga's and running back at Sargeras.

The Dark Titan snapped his fingers, and I felt fire around me.

It wasn't actual fire, thankfully. A curse of intense pain, red shadows glowing around me. It was heavily diluted, thank the Titans, but it was getting worse. I gritted my teeth, unable to focus enough to cast a spell, until the curse ended.

With a bang, shadows exploded outwards from me, as well as a dozen others. With that over, I focused back on the Dark Titan.

Droga had engaged him in a melee, but it was clear he could barely keep up. His shield was shattered, slivers of metal proof of what happened when he tried to block a swing from Gorribal. It was all he could do to pull himself out of the way of the flaming sword, striking ineffectually with his one-handed sword, even though half the time the strike was parried.

Katalyn, the only other living melee attacker, seemed to be having more luck. Her daggers kept striking the burning red skin, bouncing off a nearly invisible wall of shadows around the Dark Titan. Several times Sargeras tried to eviscerate her, but she was too quick even for him, leaning back to avoid the strikes.

Meanwhile, everyone else kept hailing offensive magic upon Sargeras, and healing magic on us, since he kept cursing us, as well as releasing fire novas. I growled, filling myself with vampiric magic, my continued words and fireballs healing my hundred-odd allies.

Sargeras leaped through the air again, landing in the kill zone. He created a crater, and another X of fires to replace the one that had faded. He didn't spend long kneeling. He pulled Gorribal out of the ground, and raised his left hand.

Invisible ropes wrapped around me, pulling myself and everyone else into the air. Then I was flying, tumbling through the air as Sargeras pulled us all into one place, keeping us suspended. I noticed five people with those agonizing curses on them, and realized his plan was to have all of them detonate on top of us.

Not if I had anything to say about it. I focused my magic on those five people, temporarily sending them into the twilight realm to explode in relative safety. When Sargeras noticed nothing was happening to us, he roared, and threw us back.

I landed on my side, coughing as the air was squeezed from my lungs. Sargeras dashed forwards, stabbing Gorribal down into a tauren. The fires along his sword fed downwards into her, and then exploded radially, killing two dozen others instantly.

I got to my feet first, which turned out to be a big mistake, because it gave me the Dark Titan's full, undivided attention.

I almost raised my daggers in an X to block his overhead strike, but at the last second I remembered the fate of Droga's shield and jumped to the side. Without stopping, Sargeras swept his sword after me, forcing me to duck. Which seemed to be his goal, because his foot, the size of my leg, flew out to kick me.

I barely sunk into the twilight realm in time, rolling back to my feet and jumping to the side. I rose back up, blasting Sargeras's back quickly with a fireball. He spun around, Gorribal leaving a trail of fire where it went. I _felt_ the wind above my head as I ducked, but then his telekinesis wrapped me up, and I could do nothing as he pulled his sword back to stab me in the gut.

Thank the Titans, at the last moment another priest tugged on my soul, pulling me back just in time. I didn't go flying, thanks to the Titan's telekinesis, but I went far enough to avoid being impaled.

He growled, everyone else getting back up. "Stubborn," he said simply, raising Gorribal into the air, the fires turning green again.

"Silence on my mark!" I heard General Vajarn shout. I understood instantly. Everyone with the correct magic would have to do so at once to interrupt the Dark Titan. The fel fires pulsed, writhed, ready to unleash another lethal volley of pyroblasts. "Mark!"

With all my might, I cast my silence at Sargeras. The fires sparked, turned red and actually extinguished for a moment. With a low, animal growl, Sargeras lowered his sword again. He leaped through the air, away from the rest of us so he had plenty of distance.

"Here," he spat, looking up and raising his free arm to the sky. "Your friends want to talk to you!"

There was a deafening creak, a groan. I looked up in horror, the Skybreaker and Orgrim's Hammer both tilting to the side dangerously.

"Scatter!" I shouted, pulling as many people into the twilight realm as I could, not doing so for myself. Vajarn opened a portal there, and everyone was rushing inside.

The airships tried to right themselves for a moment, and then both of them flew through the air, smashing into each other in a tangled mess of iron, wood, and gunpowder, which then plummeted straight down, straight at me.

I winced, and dispersed into a mist.

My gaseous body was compressed, and blown apart. The force _squeezed_ the air containing me out in a shockwave, and once that was done I began to coalesce again. Slowly at first, but then faster, dark fog forming arms, legs, clothes, scale armor, solidifying into gray eyes and blonde hair. Others, a safe distance from the two crashed, burning gunships, were coming back to the physical realm. A volley of shadowbolts flew out from Sargeras. Most people threw themselves to the dirt in time to avoid them; some died instantly when hit. Me, I was hit, but instead of dying instantly, I just got a nasty chilling and burning sensation in my heart.

With a roar, Sargeras charged at us, but stopped halfway there. He looked to the sky, black eyes narrowed.

Then he _screamed._

I couldn't even see Sargeras; he was lost inside a blinding white glow. Arcs of lightning streamed from the orb of light, blasting the ground and leaving blackened craters. The glow sustained itself for a minute, the ground beneath my feet heaving and shaking, wanting to split apart and swallow everything on top of it but refraining from doing so. We fired as many arrows, bullets and spells into the orb as we could, unaware if they were even doing anything, but we had to try, didn't we? Every bit helped, even though aiming at them made my eyes water from the sheer brightness of it all.

The earth calmed itself, and the glow faded away. The newly reoriginated Sargeras fell to the ground, panting heavily. Gorribal lay some meters from him, extinguished and smoking.

He planted both hands on the ground, seemingly ignoring our continued assault. He got to one knee, then two, both hands on the iron vrykul's legs. He pulled himself back to his full, intimidating height, and held out a shaking hand. The broken sword flew into his grasp, fires erupting along it once again, but not as strongly as before. He didn't seem to be the least bit damaged, but his actions revealed the truth; his barriers had just taken a _massive_ hit.

"Do not let him escape!" Vajarn shouted. Sure enough, Sargeras knelt and leaped, sailing impossibly high into the air. I and several other priests focused on his soul, his dark, abyssal soul that seemed to try and pull me in and tear me apart, and _pulled._ Sure enough, Sargeras fell from the sky, landing in the kill zone.

I spoke another word of pain at Sargeras and refreshed my plague, its shadowy essence slowly healing my smaller scrapes from being tossed around like a ragdoll. I noticed Ellemayne and Mariel firing arrows and shadowbolts at the Titan, mages battering him with frostbolts and shamans soaking him with geysers. He roared, arms shaking as he cursed another few people. He raised Gorribal, the fires along it flaring. A moment later a fire nova washed outwards. Droga dug in his heels and kept running at Sargeras, but Katalyn was picked up and tossed away. I grunted as the fires scorched me, but the pain was already being healed.

The hair on the back of my neck prickled, and I knew better than to ignore my instincts. I jumped to the side; not a moment too late, as a fireball crashing from the sky left a crater where I'd been a moment before. Sparing a glance around as I channeled another mind flay, I saw hundreds of fireballs forming and descending, even as Droga engaged Sargeras in another melee. Now that he'd been blasted by the reorigination mechanism, I saw that Droga was doing much better; his dodges were smoother, he got more hits in.

For a while it continued on just like that. Sargeras fighting Droga, sometimes leaping away and releasing four trails of fire. Meteoric fireballs raining from the skies, explosions of flame and volleys of shadow, me sending people briefly to the twilight realm to save them from an attack they failed to notice, my armor and blessing protecting me from just as many. Sargeras didn't seem to notice our strikes, just as before, but that had to be an act. We had to be hurting him at least a little, right?

After what must've been a dozen minutes of constant fighting, my limbs shaking from the effort of nonstop casting, Sargeras lifted his left hand. Following its motions, Droga was lifted into the air. His left fingers flicked away, and Droga flew away, smashing him, armor and all, into the dirt bowl, out cold. Katalyn leaped back just in time to avoid a cataclysmic strike that tore up the earth, but Gorribal stayed in the ground, and a fiery shockwave blew her back, also unconscious. Sargeras lifted Gorribal back out, raised his sword high, and stabbed it back into the ground, letting go. He held his right hand at his waist, and I saw something black flicker inside of it. He curled his hand up, squeezing the black orb out of existence.

"Run as fast as you can," he muttered. "But you shall never run far enough!"

My breath caught in my throat and my heart skipped a beat. Ellemayne shouted for everyone to get back. I looked at Droga, at Katalyn, as Sargeras stepped back, ready to unleash his spell. I sent them both into the twilight realm, following after them and running to the closest one; Katalyn.

Inside the twilight realm, I could still see Sargeras, a clearly defined red outline, spraying less-dense ruby fog around the area, obscuring the twilight realm's natural purple haze. I threw myself onto the worgen, and pulled Droga over to me by his soul, grabbing into his armor's red spikes.

Outline-Sargeras thrust his right hand out, and a pitch black orb the size of a dragon appeared in his palm. I yelped as the ground around me gave way, the bowl so carefully shaped by shamans pulled up and into the black hole, gone forever. Winds like nothing I'd experienced before whipped around me, and even the force of gravity itself turned on its side, pulling me towards the epicenter instead of _down_, and the pull on my feet was so strong I thought for sure I'd be ripped in half, to say nothing of the effort in holding onto the two unconscious people next to me. I felt myself slipping, my feet slowly being drawn in, the pull on them growing stronger and stronger, my blood pooling in my toes. After what seemed like hours, it mercifully ended, and I rose alone back into the physical realm.

The bowl had been ripped apart, exposing the gray stone beneath. The wreckage of the crashed airships had vanished. Sargeras clasped his glowing red hand on Gorribal, pulling it out of the ground.

Everyone else was regrouping, coming back to fight him. Sargeras didn't laugh, he didn't growl. He just swept his gaze along us, before coming to a rest on the column of red light before him. He held up his left hand, an arcane portal briefly opening above it. From it, three crystals each the size of my torso dropped out, and he telekinetically tossed them out, staking them into a very large triangle around him.

Several things happened at the same time. There was a blinding flash of light from the pillar. There was a deafening blast of noise from the pillar. The three crystals began to hemorrhage arcane missiles at us.

_'Screw Sargeras; attack the crystals' _quickly became the dominant thoughts as we poured on the firepower onto the three crystals, while their targets danced like mad to avoid the missile barrage. Above the three remaining gunships whirled, unable to deploy their weapons lest they hit a friendly.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed an exchange occurring in the middle of what used to be a ring of dirt.

Sargeras growled at an incredibly tall, red figure, dwarfing even him.

Algalon had just caught Sargeras's swing with his two daggers, and now the Observer looked down at the Titan who was a fraction of his height.

"Your actions are illogical. All possible results for this encounter have been calculated. You have precisely seventeen courses of action in the next second that do not result in your termination." Sargeras fired a shadowbolt point-blank at Algalon, which the living constellation did not even seem to notice. His monotone voice got an undertone of steel. "And that _was not one._" _Crack!_ The first of the crystals splintered.

Sargeras pulled Gorribal away and swung at Algalon's waist, only for his broken sword to be caught again. There were another four flashes of light, forming a square around Sargeras in addition to his triangle of crystals. Thorim, Freya, Hodir, Mimiron.

"Observer," he growled. "You seem to have grown a spine." _Crack!_ One to go.

"Rapid acceleration of entropy on your part is against natural order, as well as desired order. Therefor, to be... frank, I am sentencing you to death. Your execution is right now."

Hodir and Freya both held out their hands. The air immediately around Sargeras turned blue and frigid, the earth around him burst open. Green vines as thick as my head snaked out from the cracks, snaking around Sargeras. They wrapped around his limbs and tried to throw him to the ground, but they burned away before they could. Still, they severely restricted his movement. Thorim and Mimiron raised both their hands to the sky. Something in my chest swelled, electrifying my insides with great speed, my thoughts racing like never before. I could see my standard spells and how to improve them; more damage, less mana cost, faster cast speeds, lower cooldowns. It all just _came_ to me, just as the last crystal shattered.

Algalon began rapidly stabbing at Sargeras with his daggers, so fast I could only see a maroon blur where his arms should've been. Sargeras raised Gorribal and parried the strikes, but I could see something in the black voids of his eyes. He was having _difficulty. _He was _afraid._

He smirked, even as he moved Gorribal in frantic circles, not given the opportunity to so much as swing at Algalon. All the while ignoring our resuming rain of ranged attacks. "That the best you can do?"

Without pausing his assault, black lightning arced outwards from Sargeras's glowing red skin. It struck the ground all around us, opening miniature black portals. A moment later, a group of demons poured from the portals before they closed.

I jumped away from another falling fireball, and ducked below a felguard's axe. It lifted its foot and, before I could defend myself, kicked me in the chest. I flew away, coughing in pain. I tried to get up, but my ribs were on fire. They had to be broken. I was sure of it.

I rolled onto my side and aimed a hand at the felguard. I cupped the hand and unleashed a stream of twilight flame at it, setting it ablaze. Then I began to flay its mind, slowing its steps. Healing spells began to wash over me, but not fast enough to get me back on my feet. The felguard arrived, and raised its axe high, ready to bring it down on me. I cringed...

And screamed in fright as the demon was vaporized, an arcane explosion tearing it apart. Wincing in pain, I got back up, looking back at the duel between Sargeras and Algalon. Now, above Algalon, five of those red, spherical constellations hovered, blasting Sargeras repeatedly with explosive arcane barrages. One of those had saved me, then? Just in the nick of time; screams of pain told me some others weren't as lucky.

I barely cast five spells on Sargeras when more black lightning surged from him, summoning yet more demons. Luckily, this time I was only facing a group of imps. A twilight explosion from me, a seed of corruption from Mariel, and a volley of arrows from Ellemayne rendered them neutralized.

Sargeras threw out more curses of agony, more fire novas, but it was clear that Algalon was besting him, now that he was weakened. Algalon summoned enormous stars, one of which hovered next to me. It was twice my size, an orb of light surrounded by brilliant sparkles. It looked... unstable, somehow. Like it was going to collapse under its own weight.

As I watched, Sargeras whipped around, throwing a fireball at the one next to me. The projectile impacted, and the star collapsed entirely, the dense core turning incredibly small, the size of an eyeball. It then darkened, forming a miniature black hole. A wave of shadow magic washed outwards, and I cringed backwards. Luckily, before it could hit me, the explosion curved around, redirecting its full might towards Sargeras in a single massive beam.

I stumbled away from the black hole, ignoring its suction. I saw black clouds seeping out of the vortex, forming what looked like a skinny voidwalker, made of some strange dark matter, which went after Sargeras.

He roared again, summoning more demons. While we were distracted fighting them, he shielded himself in another flame cocoon. Algalon's attacks cracked and dented the shield, but not fast enough to stop Sargeras from raising Gorribal. The fires along his sword flared, and blew outwards like a tidal wave, constantly washing over everybody. I gasped, summoning my holy magic and carefully controlling it, disciplining its uses to weave a golden barrier around Mariel, Ellemayne, and I. The fires broke against the shield, not intense enough to penetrate it. I saw the black hole next to me greedily feeding off of the fire, but beyond that I was blind.

Finally, the barrage of fire ended, mere instants before my barrier disintegrated. Algalon and the Watchers were unfazed, the former already summoning new living constellations, the previous five being dead, simultaneously slashing his daggers in a wide, reality-shifting arc before him. The Demon Lord's fire barrier was gone, and I could see black cracks along his skin as the last of his protective magics fell to pieces under our assault.

And then, with a thick coil of black lightning that opened a gargantuan portal, Sargeras summoned a pit lord.

Right away, the pit lord swung its tail, knocking Mariel off into the distance. My jaw dropped, watching him fly. Someone else, thankfully, cast a levitation on him, but judging by the lack of motion he was out cold... or worse.

The pit lord swung its double-sided polearm, skewering a whole row of kaldorei archers. He moved his polearm further, swinging it around his head and slamming it down, parallel to the ground. A cresting wave of fire shot out, scorching the ground. Ellemayne leaped backwards from it, landing next to me. Of course, that just attracted the pit lord's attention to _both_ of us.

It raised its polearm again. I meekly grasped Ellemayne's shoulder and pulled us both into the twilight realm. A moment later, I brought us back up, to find that the pit lord had found a new target in the form of a draenic shaman, and was currently breathing fire over them in an attempt to break their water shield.

Whispering a dark word, I blasted the pit lord's mind directly. Very quickly, its hide was filled with arrows and magic burns, but then a shadow barrier formed around it, protecting the demon from further assaults. The fact that Sargeras summoned even more demons did not help things, no matter how many meteors Algalon smashed into the ground.

The pit lord turned to me and, with greater speed than anything of its size should possess, charged at me, polearm's point aimed at my chest. My aching limbs locked up and I cringed, waiting for the impact...

... that never came. I opened my eyes to see that the pit lord was transparent, with translucent green mist whirling around it. It didn't move, not a centimeter. It was almost like it had been frozen in time, its contorted, mid-cry face almost comically. I turned around to see Mariel there, face contorted with the effort of holding two shadow orbs in his hands.

"I thought you were - "

He cut me off. "Merely a setback! I got this guy!"

And so the battle with Sargeras raged on, but it was utterly in our favor now. He couldn't beat Algalon, his spells grew less and less potent, and whatever demons he summoned were either outright killed or enslaved by Mariel and then made to commit suicide. The Observer summoned stars and constellations, throwing solar systems and tearing down the heavens to battle Sargeras, who was chilled and ensnared by two Watchers. Magic charged the air with the smell of ozone. I was exhausted, but the end was so close! I could see the black cracks across his body, his protective magic was almost gone! And then...

Sargeras _roared_. A beam of white-hot fire streaked down from the heavens, catching him in the small of the back. Whoever was channeling the beam was not alone, as moments later the flames were joined by a narrow beam of poison, of shimmering yellow light, dark blue shadows, and frigid ice. Sargeras's shadow skin shattered, fading away. The pressure of the beams forced him onto the ground, the blasts actually carving a hole through his chest and continuing to sear the ground, igniting the dirt. His sword fell to the ground, and Algalon tossed it into a nearby black hole.

"The game is over," Algalon said coldly, a dozen of his dark matter constructs attacking Sargeras. "The Aspects have arrived, Sargeras. You are... out of time." Emboldened by those words and the sound of flapping wings, I renewed my assault, pouring everything I had into my last pyroblasts.

Sargeras grunted, kept down by the assault of the remaining twelve mortals and five Aspects. His skin glowed orange, then as he shakily got up, ignoring the expanding hole in his chest, glowed yellow.

He started to move his hands in circles, dark orange streaks of light flickering in them. The ground beneath him lit up with blazing, fiery runes, and three orbs of flame inscriptions began to orbit him in a triangle. I could feel the energy seeping out of the air, out of the fabric of the universe, pooling towards Sargeras's last celestial spell. The world desaturated, colors drawn out. Realizing whatever was about to happen was probably not conducive to my health I started to back off, shielding myself with as potent of a power word as I could, dispersing into indigo mist, everything except fading into the twilight realm. I was no expert on reading spells, but even I could tell that doing that would not help me in the slightest.

More and more energy poured into Sargeras's spell, enough energy, it seemed, to create entire planets, stars, _universes._ With a furious, suicidal roar, Sargeras raised his right hand, glowing white hot. I had no eyes to close, but was still blinded by the intense flash of light. For a moment there was nothing, and then there was everything. A surge of heat like nothing I'd ever experienced, a deafening roar that drowned out the heavens. The impact of the biggest bang I'd ever witnessed slamming me backwards, the agonizing heat burning away at my essence...

I reformed, but everything was still white and yellow. I stumbled, and fell. I couldn't feel my armor, I couldn't feel anything. Nothing except the tortured, scorched earth coming up to welcome me.

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><p><strong>I hope that lived up to your expectations.<strong>

**Please review, let me know what you think!**


	49. Chapter 49:Greatest Triumph

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Huge thanks to my beta, dharak.**

**Chapter published 7/20/13**

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><p><span>Amanthe<span>

The world around me warped and rose, fell and stiffened.

The sky was blue, and then it was overcast, and then the clouds were orange and rained blood, and then the clouds were gone and the sky was a black and white hypnotist's swirl. Mountains and hills danced to some unseen tune, rising up and falling into canyons and valleys like waves at sea.

I stood next to a little stone brick. It inflated to the size of a house, grew windows and a door, and beckoned me in. I accepted the building's invitation and walked through, escaping the malleable world behind.

The inside was much larger than the outside, because inside was the entire city of Stormwind, right inside the Trade District.

Everyone was happy, walking back and forth below a brilliant blue sky. The sun was high and bright, not a cloud in sight. Draenei talked with night elves, gnomes worked on their suicidal machines, humans and dwarves and worgen talked with each other. All in all it was... rather perfect.

I smiled, wanting to join in with them. I deserved it, didn't I? After fighting Titan constructs and demons, faceless and maddened half-ascendants, even facing Sargeras himself, I'd earned a little R&R, no?

The crowd soon took notice of me and surrounded me, faceless faces smiling and leading me onwards towards a wooden park table. They sat me down on one bench, before a silver platter with the dome still hiding what was beneath. A tall human with blue-painted hair and frost magic dripping from her hands whirled around and grasped the dome, which turned brittle under her touch. She lifted it, revealing what was beneath. There, surrounded by various utensils, was a single black goat with an apple propping its mouth open.

Its horns were purple, and it had seven eyes encircling its head. All of them were glassy and dead, the goat not moving or breathing. My breath caught in my throat at the sight of the black goat, my gaze drawn towards its middle 'eye'.

I couldn't tear my eyes away, and soon my vision turned the same milky color of that goat's eye, the festive party of Stormwind fading out...

- someone slapped my back before I could be completely entranced. The black goat got up, gray eyes turning lively again, and leaped onto the nearby rooftops. Everyone around me screamed and backed off, but they weren't scared; it was more like when someone had been pranked by having water sprayed on them. The goat leaped away, out of sight. My gaze followed it as long as possible...

... until I saw an enormous river of fire by the northern mountains.

All eyes turned to it. People began gasping and pointing as the fiery shadow blew over Stormwind. The sky cracked and turned orange, inundated with flame. A huge wall of scales soared over me. I whipped around to see the figure grasping the ramparts of Stormwind with two gargantuan, armored forelegs. Black metal engulfed his entire form, right down to the barbed tail. The dragon roared out to the forest beyond, then turned around.

Deathwing's ember eyes locked on me, and he opened his massive jaw wide before blowing a stream of fire over me. I gasped in surprise as the flames washed over me, obscuring Stormwind from sight. The fire whirled around me, then all at once fell to the ground, like water down a drain. I wasn't in the city anymore.

Instead I was in a plain white room, little more than a box around me.

Whatever panic there'd been from Deathwing's return was gone, washed away by the waves of change.

I walked around, trying to identify any distinguishing features. Aside from a pearl-white chair in the middle of the room, there was nothing. I walked along to one wall, running my hand along it. Where my hand passed the wall turned a shimmering red and purple, before fading back to white.

"Weird," I said.

Hearing a clang, I turned around, looking at the opposite wall, which had turned transparent. Behind it was a human woman. She was in her mid twenties, with deathly pale skin, dark circles under her eyes, a narrow chin, and scars crisscrossing her face, some on her neck. Her eyes were a deep indigo, similar to the flashes of color I sometimes saw on her long, black hair, which stopped right above her plain purple robes.

I looked at her curiously as she raised a fist and slammed it into the window, which rattled under her blow. She scowled, baring razor sharp fangs, and began beating at the mirror with fists encased with purple fire.

I raised an eyebrow, and turned back to my wall, opening a newly appearing door. White light shone out of it, engulfing me and bringing me to...

Lordaeron.

I hadn't seen the city in so very, very long. Back in its prime, when I'd lived there in a little apartment with my mother and Samuel, when there'd been no dragons, no Old Gods bent on destroying the world, no fallen Titans trying to rip it apart with their bare hands. Just us and the Horde. Sadly, it wasn't that Lordaeron I was in.

People ran this way and that, away from rampaging ghouls and skeletons. One man, in his late fifties with a business suit and monocle over his eyes, made a break for the stairwell I stood on top of when a hook flew out from nowhere, wrapped around his chest, and with a strangled gurk pulled him backwards into the awaiting grip of an abomination.

I ran as a lamp post fell down, shattering the stone where I'd been a moment ago. I had to get out of here. I couldn't, wouldn't let the ghouls on my tail eat me _alive!_

I ran, dashing through shifting corridors and warping streets, undead falling to ashes before a six year old girl who ran beside me. She vanished in a felfire nova, knocking my head against the nearest wall. I recovered quickly, only to be surrounded by skeletons. Two of them grabbed my shoulders. The others lined up next to them, grabbing the shoulders of the skeleton next to them. The row of a dozen or so undead, six on either side, began swaying left and right, _singing._

"For she's a jolly good fellow! For she's a jolly good fellow! For she's a jolly good fello-o-o-w!"

Then they threw me onto the ground, except the ground wasn't the ground, but rather a cloud.

The cloud floated through the night sky, a patch of fluffy cumulus surrounded by wispy cirrus. All around me on the threadbare clouds were gnomes and goblins laughing at me and blowing up citrus fruits. I came to a stop before a giant anvil-shaped cloud, taller than any others with lightning flashing below the base. My cloud hovered to the top, where it was so cold the moisture of the thundercloud turned to ice crystals. Sitting atop the cloud were two dragons, identical save for scale color and horn orientation. One was amethyst, one ruby. Both looked at me with sad eyes. The red dragon reared up on her hind legs and slammed her forelegs out, claws scraping along some invisible barrier. She glared at me, beating at the invisible barrier, shouting and screaming soundless curses while the twilight one looked at her with a bemused expression.

Sargeras walked up next to me on my cloud, still in his red hot, iron vrykul body. He took out a basic flintlock pistol and held the gun next to my head. He squeezed the trigger, and my eyes rolled up in my head as something shot out the other side of my ear. Glancing to the very edges of my vision, I saw it was a blue flag that read 'BANG!'.

Before I could question it anymore, the cloud beneath me gave out and I _plummeted_, through the skies and the cirrus clouds, through the trees and branches below, sinking through the soil and falling through stone, through diamond, lava, molten iron, then again in reverse order. I fell out of Azeroth, watching the blue orb recede from my view...

* * *

><p>My eyes fluttered open, then instantly slammed shut again when the light mercilessly stabbed them.<p>

Where was I? Last thing I knew I'd been in the vacuum of space, falling for eternity among all sorts of strange, whimsical constructs. Now, I felt warm, and comfortable and _oh so very thirsty._

I realized I was on my back, under some covers. I stirred, slowly cracking my eyes open, expecting to see the cloud covered skies of Hyjal. Instead, I was greeted with a dark ceiling of chiseled and decorated stone, flickering purple light from elsewhere illuminating the area.

I tried to get up, but I felt like there was a mountain on top of me. I groaned miserably, glancing to the corners of my vision. My entire body was wrapped in a pale indigo gown, and above that lay something like a bedsheet. Further inspection by my addled mind revealed it was, in fact, a bed sheet, warm dwarven colors contrasting sharply with cool twilight.

I winced, blinking sharply. I groaned again. Why was everything so heavy? Why did my stomach growl like an erupting volcano, why was my throat filled with shards of hot glass? How did I get into Grim Batol? Perhaps I'd been killed by that massive, _massive_ cosmic explosion Sargeras conjured, and this was the afterlife? I'd certainly never felt anything like it before. Even dissolved into a cloud of mist, I'd felt my blood boil and my organs melt.

I blinked again, my senses focusing a bit more. I noticed I wasn't laying completely on my back; my head was propped up. I tried to twist my head to see what I was propped up _by_, but it was like moving a mountain, so I gave up and resolved to lie there with my eyes open, scanning the area, and began to try and thing analytically.

This wasn't the afterlife, my body hurt too much, so it had to be Grim Batol. Grim Batol was on the other side of the planet from Hyjal, which meant that it had been a long time since the battle with Sargeras. The mere fact that I was alive hinted as to what the outcome of said battle was, but I dared not think it lest I tempt fate.

I heard the clicking of claws along stone. I tried to attune my gaze on who was approaching, but my eyes went out of focus so all I saw was a purple blob.

The blob sighed in Selriona's voice. "Alright..." I groaned as her voice, which was like a grand symphony of tone-death gnomes in my head, reverberated. "Wait, what?"

"Quiet, will you?" I managed through my parched lips.

A moment of silence. My vision refocused, letting me see Selriona more clearly. Her tusks were retracted, her right horn still broken off near the base, and both her wings tucked closely onto her back, tail-club scraping its spikes along the stone floor. She looked at me, pupils slitted in shock. My addled brain was having difficulty comprehending _why_ she was so surprised, why her wings were unfolding to their greatest extent. Then the damned dragon _tackled_ me, slamming her snout into me, babbling in Draconic.

"AMANTHE! You're awake you're awake oh thank the Titans you're awake I was so worried I thought you'd never wake up I mean after Sargeras blew up the area was so burned and only Algalon and the Watchers could take something like that and you were so hurt even though you weren't burned or on fire you were unconscious and you were barely breathing at all and I tried to get you back here as soon as possible but there was so much to do because of the Scourge and the Legion and the Cult well the Cult's gone now but even when you got back here - "

"Ach!" I said, trying to push her away with my feeble strength. There was a deep _thud thud thud_ as her tail wagged back and forth like a puppy's. My protests finally made her calm down and stop invading my personal space. "Selriona, not so loud." With titanic effort I raised a hand to my forehead. "Wha - what happened?"

She grinned so wide I thought her fangs would fall out. "What happened? Amanthe, we _won! _Sargeras is dead!"

It took me a few minutes to figure out what that meant, and then a smile broke out on my face. "So, it's over?"

"Yep! Once Sargeras died, the rest of the Legion didn't survive getting blasted. Not even a single straggler to hunt down. The Cult's dead, thanks to the Old God pushing them so hard, and both the faceless and the Old God are dead because of the reorigination mechanism."

"Looks like Algalon was right about the whole 'detach' theory."

Selriona grunted. "Thank the Titans, too." Her gaze softened. "Are you feeling alright?"

"Thirsty, hungry, weak, and I feel like I've been rolled over by a mountain. What exactly happened?"

"Amanthe, don't you remember what Sargeras did?"

I racked my brains. The rust was coming off, but higher functions were still faulty. "Well... I remember fighting him. Katalyn and Droga got knocked out, um, Algalon fought him. The Aspects came and fried him." Realization dawned on me. "That giant explosion he cast - "

"Yeah, giant is putting it lightly. I felt it all the way from the World Tree. When we got there, it, well. It wasn't pretty. Sargeras's body was stone cold dead... at least, what was left of him was. Katalyn and Droga, thank the Titans, apparently woke up inside the twilight realm and got far enough away. Ellemayne and Mariel practically dug themselves underground to avoid the blast. Besides them, you were the only mortal alive." She grimaced, swallowing. "Your armor was gone, and most of your robes burned to cinders. You'd lost all your magical enchantments, including my blessing, and you were so pale, and, and..."

"How bad?"

"Amanthe, I don't know how to tell you this, but there's a reason we moved you to Grim Batol's infirmary."

"What happened?"

"You're not going to like it."

"I can take it."

"You're _really_ not going to like it."

Had I the strength, I would've crossed my arms. "Try me.

She took a breath. "You've been in a coma for eight months."

I froze.

Eight months.

My first thought was that it could've been worse. It could've been _much_ worse. After all, I'd taken Sargeras's nova essentially point blank. I could've been out for years. Or decades. Hells, Selriona would probably keep casting the anti-aging spell on me; I could easily have woken up centuries later.

But then I realized just how long eight months was. I'd have starved and dehydrated so many times, and it didn't take a genius to figure out Selriona had been keeping me alive for that length of time. How worried had she been? How worried had Jason been? And some part of me that was still thirty years old, not three hundred, balked at losing such a length of time to dreams. And pretty strange dreams at that...

... wait.

"In my dreams, I saw you in your mortal form, and both you and Nalestrasza in your true forms. What was that about?" I asked.

Selriona frowned. "I tried to reach you. Several times, and she helped." She shook her head. "She tried to reach into your mind and wake you up, but there's only so much Nalestrasza can do to someone who isn't _me_, and you were in too deep."

"Well, it's the thought that counts." I grimaced, trying to sit up, but Selriona rested a giant paw on my chest and pushed me back down.

"No you don't. You've got muscle atrophy. I may have been keeping you fed, hydrated, and relieved - "

"Relieved?!"

" - but you haven't been moving and and oh you must feel so weak, but just take your time, alright? Now that you're awake, you've got plenty of time to recover."

I groaned, remembering how weak I was. Already, the exhaustion of just moving my arms threatened to send me back to sleep. "Well, since I'm up, what did I miss?"

Selriona rose up onto her haunches. I noticed her claws didn't have the talon sheathes on them anymore. "Well, after we confirmed Sargeras was dead, and that the rest of the Legion got vaporized by the reorigination, a lot of things happened. The Scourge retreated to Icecrown for starters. Treating the wounded, mourning the dead, that sort of thing. Got you back here as soon as I could and began treating you. Hope you like your new robes; old ones were almost vaporized and I know how much you mortals like modesty." I blushed furiously, but Selriona continued. "As for the damage, well, it could've been so much worse. Quite a few cities have been wrecked. Stormwind and Orgrimmar held on by the scales of their fangs, and Wyrmrest is _gone_. Overall, though? The Legion wasn't focused on conquering Azeroth as much as they were on destroying the World Tree; why break decorations when there's a war to win?"

"And the Watchers? Algalon?"

"Algalon's gone. Ascended back to the Great Dark Beyond in some kind of explosion. The Watchers are busy repairing Ulduar, and nothing is convincing them to help with other places." She tilted her head, as if remembering something. "As for the world as a whole..." She shivered. "It's really cold. The entire planet's covered in clouds thanks to Un'goro. The shamans are trying to clear the skies, but it'll be only winter for another five years." She lowered her head. "There's going to be a famine."

I swallowed, realizing just what the dropping temperatures would mean for the dragonflights. Focusing my sight a bit more, I noticed Selriona's ribs beginning to show through her scales.

"So, we're not out of the woods yet," I said.

"No," Selriona admitted. "But the worst is over." She nudged me with her snout, pushing me back down. "For now, rest and recover. I'll bring you something to eat, alright? Oh, something to drink too." With that, Selriona turned around, her tail still wagging furiously behind her as she stepped out of the infirmary.

I closed my eyes, smiling.

We had won.

* * *

><p><strong>And so ends Section 5, Legion's Grip. Not over yet, though.<strong>

**Review, let me know what you think.**


	50. Chapter 50:Broken Bond

**Disclaimer: I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Huge, huge thanks to dharak for beta'ing this!**

**Chapter published 8/3/13. Damn, this is going to be a hard Section to write, in more ways than one.**

* * *

><p><strong>Section 6:Full Circle<strong>

302 years, six months, seven days, eleven hours, fifty-seven minutes and eight seconds after the epilogue of Coup de What?

Amanthe

Perhaps it was cold. Perhaps everyone got a certain ration of food for the month and that was it. Perhaps the building had been wrecked in the Siege of Stormwind and on the verge of collapse. Perhaps the floorboards were soggy with snow I had sometimes trudged in from outside, kept from growing foul fungi and lichen only by virtue of sterilizing, shadowy flame. Perhaps that cabinet hinge squeaked a little too loudly when it closed, and resisted movement when it opened.

But it was home.

I slipped out of my nightgown into a pale blue shirt and dark blue pants, as well as other assorted pieces of clothing. With a zombie-like gate, I stumbled down the stairs, skipping over the crooked one fifth from the bottom, and opened a cupboard. I took out a magically preserved apple, some bread and jam, and took a seat next to the dinner table and began to eat. As I sat down, the chair creaked. I'd need to get that fixed.

I looked over at the puzzle box resting on a bookshelf, in place of where there'd be a lamp in other homes. Ever since the last of the Old Gods had fallen, it never gave me nightmares. It didn't whisper to me when I tried to open it, and the 'following eye' illusion was just a regular, painted eye on a purple wooden box. Nothing corrupting about it. Nothing sinister about it. Just a frustratingly difficult puzzle that, even after three centuries, I couldn't beat.

Not to say I hadn't gotten close.

Finishing up my breakfast, stretching to get the kinks I'd developed overnight out of my back, I headed over to my coat-rack, situated right next to my door. There was only one coat on it, a heavy, dark purple thing. I pulled it on, pulling the fur-ringed hood over my head for the added warmth, and started out.

Like it had been every day for the past four years, it was overcast and chilly. Snow up to my ankles lined the streets, and there was a moment of shocked chill when I remembered I'd forgotten my boots. A few minutes later, that was fixed, and I was out on the streets once more.

Few people were out, since it was so _fucking_ cold. Snowflakes gently hovered down from the heavens, sticking to my coat's fur like tiny jewels. I found my way easily out of Old Town, crossed the bridge over the frozen-over Canals, and entered the Trade District. Not surprisingly, there were more people in the Trade District, but also not surprisingly, there was still no crowd. The largest group of people were around the markets selling food, eager to get their rations. I had little trouble with that, thankfully; perpetual winter or not, being able to hunt comes in handy.

As I walked, I heard the conversations around me, about the years past but still too recent invasion.

"Heard the Dragonflights have a portal route - "

" - Horde's been pushing for an offensive! Can you believe it? We barely make it when we have the defender advantage!"

" - banish them all for all I care!"

I looked up at the ramparts, at the two towers that had, long long ago, been seared by Deathwing's claws. His burning talons had cursed them, and no matter what was attempted the scars remained, as if the former Black Aspect had marked Stormwind as his. Now, though, with the Old Gods slain, the scorched stone had finally cooled, and now the ramparts were whole once more. While the Cathedral District and the Dwarven District still suffered heavily from the bombardment during the Legion's invasion, the rest of the Alliance capital rebounded fairly quick. However, I had a destination.

Moving on, I soon found myself walking through the Canals again. Once or twice I levitated over the frozen channels, not daring to set foot down lest I find a thin spot. Knowing my luck, it would be the first step.

Before too long, I overloaded my levitation spell to land back on the stone pathways, entering the Park. Its normally crisp greenery was strangled beneath the snow, but I wasn't here for the greenery. Many of the walls here had been obliterated, and in their place was erected a new wall. One that was smooth, flowing gray stone, that didn't break off, but instead wrapped around the outside of the Park to show just what had been lost. Inscribed on it was a trail of names, all in Common, in alphabetical order. There are people here. Sitting, standing, rubbing their hands along a tiny, chiseled name with tears down their eyes. Orphans, widows, friends, parents.

I walked by, looking at the names. Everyone who'd fallen, regardless of faction, was here. I caught sight of one of the G's and traced my finger along it, hovering just above the stone.

_General Vajarn._

The name was inscribed delicately, and next to it was a purple dragon's head, and next to that a square with an X going through it to symbolize Killed in Action. I sighed. I didn't know too much about General Vajarn, but Selriona always spoke highly of him. He'd fought in the final battle with the Dark Titan alongside me, casting twilight blasts and shadow mends left and right. I hadn't seen him die, but I knew he hadn't been alive when Sargeras cast his Big Bang.

I continued on, looking idly at the names. I paused when I reached one in particular. Next to it was the Alliance's lion head, and a square with an X.

"Jason," I whispered, tracing my fingers along his name. I bowed my head and closed my eyes, a cold tear running down my cheek. I held that position for a long time, mourning my fallen husband, before I knew that I needed to go on. However heavy my legs were, I turned back around and headed out of the Park.

It took me next to no time to return to my house. I shut the door, keeping out the chill wind. Shivering, I re-lit the lantern in the corner with a spark of twilight flame. Shedding my coat and hanging it back up, I grabbed my puzzle box, climbed the stairs, and flopped down on the green sheets of my bed.

Idly, I shifted its hinges and levers back and forth. Twist the spike there, move the ball bearing along the outside of the eye. Fiddle this, fiddle that, almost solve it, then its gears reset -

- except it didn't reset.

My eyes widened at the lack of failure. I grabbed another clasp and undid it. This way, that way. The puzzle fit into my mind, waves of euphoric _understanding_ washing over me in a single cry of eureka.

There was a click.

The box opened.

For a moment I couldn't understand what had happened. I'd had the puzzle box for little over three centuries now, ever since I got it while undercover in the Twilight's Hammer. It had always been impossible to open, quite literally mocking me for my efforts. And now, I'd... I'd actually...

"YES!" I shouted, likely rousing the neighbors next door, in addition to making someone in Orgrimmar look up and think 'Huh?'. After performing an awkward little victory dance, one I would have died from had anyone seen it, I flopped back in my bed and held the open box to my chest. "Yes yes yes yes yes!"

For a moment I was happy enough that I'd just opened the box, but after calming myself down with several hastily-obtained glasses of water, I looked inside.

It was a little slab of gray stone, about the size of my hand. It was rather irregular, like a kindergartener had smooshed clay between their hands. I tapped it, my nails making it _clink clink_ gently. I flipped it over; there was writing on it, in Draconic.

"Guardians and usurpers," I read aloud. "Fiends and controllers, reveal the faces of your minions, reveal the faces of the chosen of the shapers. Reveal the truth, reveal the falsehoods, show the cursed their wardens." As I finished reading it, the slab almost _glowed_ in my hands. A surge of magic shot through the air around me, stealing my breath away and making my spine tingle. As quickly as it came it went, leaving me wondering if anything had actually happened at all.

I placed it down next to me. "Weird," I muttered.

_'Hey, Selriona, got a minute?'_

_'Just a sec!' _One second... _'Alright. Pounced on a stag, see. Had to finish it off. So, how are you?'_

_'Great! You'll never believe what I just did.'_

_'Try me.'_

_'Alright, you know the puzzle box I got from the Twilight's Hammer?'_

Her voice chilled. _'The one you revealed to me last week, and I've been trying to get you to get rid of it since?'_

_'Yeah, that one. I opened it.'_

_'Wait, you what? I thought those things were impossible to open!'_

_'Well, I guess the idea behind them was that you'd go mad before you figure out how. I mean, it _did_ take me three centuries to solve.'_

_'Oh, well. Congratulations, then! I'm guessing you don't need it for anything else, then?'_

She wanted me to set it on fire. _'I don't know, might come in handy for a snowy day... oh, and looking out the window...'_

A telepathic groan.

_'Relax, relax. I'll get rid of it; trust me, I never want to see it ever again. Funny thing, though. It wasn't empty.'_

_'Really? What was in it?'_

_'Some sort of stone tablet. Had Draconic on it, too. I swear, when I read it, some kinda magic filled the air.' _Silence. _'Um, Selriona, are you alright?' _More silence. _'Selriona?'_

_'No. No, I'm not okay. A-Amanthe, how... oh Titans _no._ Damn it... alright. Amanthe, can you come here? To Grim Batol, I mean?' _She seemed to remember something. _'O-or I could come to you! If you don't want to leave your home, that is. I would have NO trouble coming to you instead!'_

_'No, it's alright, I'll be right over. Is something wrong?'_

_'No! Yes! I don't know! Yes I do!' _She sighed. _'Ugh, alright. You'll need to bring some things with you. Can you take a list? You'll need...'_

* * *

><p>Grim Batol in winter isn't as charming as you may think, especially when the winter's been going on for years. The mountains are covered in snow as deep as a tauren bull is tall, and it alternates randomly from so iced you can slip and crack your head on it, to so soft and fluffy air would support your weight better.<p>

And the dragons don't exactly take care of their front lawn, either. So as I approached the gates, guarded by two drakonids, I had to constantly weave around irregular dips and rises in the snow.

They crossed their spears when I arrived, and I sighed in exasperation. "One would think you'd recognize me by now," I said to the two drakonids, both of which were suspiciously close to the warm twilight flame torches. I lit up my hands with a burst of twilight fire, shivering as the chilling fire reacted with the snow. "Can I come in now?"

Expressionlessly, their uncrossed their spears, letting me pass. I rubbed my hands together, blowing into them. Titans, was it ever cold!

The halls of Grim Batol weren't nearly as welcoming as I remembered. They were cold, dark, and the heat from the magma below did little to combat either. The patrols were few and far between, and those on them were skinnier than I knew was healthy for dragonkin. Not to say I hadn't lost a couple kilos myself...

I jumped down a flight of stairs, levitating my way down. I turned a corner, went through corridors, down the central spire, always descending. Before too long I reached the bottom of Grim Batol, so close to the magma that all remnants of winter outside were gone.

Inside, the chamber expanded to a gargantuan size, the roof arcing far above my head, the walls stretching back. Just this chamber alone was the size of the Cathedral of Light, minus the spire. Leave it to the dwarves. What would they possibly have done with all this space?

Selriona laid in the middle on a mat of twigs and leaves, fiddling her foreclaws with each other. Her eyes were screwed shut, but twitched under their lids like she were having a nightmare. When I walked in, she took a deep breath through her nostrils and cracked open an eye. She looked my way, instantly found something interesting on the floor, and shifted to her human form. We approached each other, but she didn't seem to be able to make eye contact with me.

"Alright, what's the matter with you?" I asked.

"Can I see it?" she returned, shamelessly changing the subject. I had half a mind to protest, but the pained look on her face told me she was going to tell me. I slung the bag off my back and pulled out the tablet from it. I handed it over to her, and she began inspecting it like it would kill someone if left unattended. Seemingly satisfied, she gave it back to me, wilting again. "Read it."

"Um, alright?" I turned it over so the Draconic runes were facing me again. "Guardians and usurpers, fiends and controllers, reveal the faces of your minions, reveal the faces of the chosen of the shapers. Reveal the truth, reveal the falsehoods, show the cursed their wardens." There was the same surge of magic, and then Selriona grunted, scraping her claws along the ground.

_Claws?_

I looked twice, and sure enough, she was back in her true form. One foreleg rested against her stomach, which expanded and contracted rapidly. "Titans. Forced shapeshifting _sucks._"

"So, what, this tablet - " I flipped it over in my hands. " - dispels nearby shapeshifts?"

"Probably just for dragons. I hear the Kingslayers used something similar a long time ago to reveal Onyxia." She lowered her head, choking back a... sob? "Amanthe," she said, looking past me. "I - I have a mission for you," she said as if she were announcing my funeral date. "But you're not going to like it."

"Um, okay?"

"Amanthe, how much do you know about what happened between Verthelion and I? I mean, at Hyjal, when we were drakes?"

"All I know is that you found him, and knocked him away from Ysera before she could kill him, and then explained the truth to him."

She closed her eyes. "That's not entirely true. The first time, I failed. An Infinite drake slowed me down - "

"A _what?_" I asked. Of course, I knew about the Infinite. As part of the Dragonflights, how could I not? Mysterious, dark dragons. Corrupted Bronzes, hellsbent on mangling the timeline. Distinctly, I remembered Selriona being attacked by them when she was a drake, long ago. I never gave it much thought back then; after all, with Deathwing around you don't think twice about hostile dragons, but so many years later it clicked. The Infinite had been trying to meddle with Selriona's history. But...

"But you didn't fail. Verthelion's alive now."

Selriona began to stammer. "He didn't - wasn't the first time! The damned drake slowed down time for me, so by the time I reached Verthelion he was dead. A-a-and then Chronormu came and she told me she could help me save him because he wasn't supposed to have died, well that was after Ysera almost killed _me_, we we we went to the Caverns of Time and _back_ in time and I had help this time, so I killed the Infinite drake before it could slow my past self and then everything was just _fine!_ But, but... the help..."

"It was me, wasn't it? I went back and helped you."

She grimaced. "Ellemayne, Katalyn, Droga, and Mariel too." She looked at the tablet. "You had that with you. At one point, you used it to expose several Infinite disguised as night elves. You said you'd seen the Kingslayers use something like that before."

"That's not true," I protested. "I've never seen anything like it!"

She shrugged her wings. "Well, then I suppose you'll have to lie about it."

"Okay then. So when do I go?"

"You don't have to go!" Selriona shouted. "I mean, you said you were three hundred but you can lie about it! You don't have to go now, all it matters is that you go... sometime!"

"Why? I mean, I can go right now - "

"_Because you die there!_" she roared. "I save Verthelion, but an agent of the Infinite freezes me and tries to kill me. You fight them, and kill them, but you get _stabbed_ with a _poisoned_ knife and I _watched you die! This mission is a death sentence!"__  
><em>

I blinked. I blinked again. I deciphered what she said, and then clenched my fists. "So you've known, all this time, exactly how I was going to die?" She deflated, sinking back to the ground, and nodded. "You've known that I couldn't die except for that? That Mal'ganis, Argus, and Sargeras, none of them could kill me because I'm destined to die _there?_ Why in the name of the Titans didn't you _tell me?!_" I shouted.

"What would I have told you?" she spat back, raising her head, pupils slitting. "Oh hey Amanthe, I watched you die? No, sorry, nothing I could do? Or, oh no, don't worry about giving your all to fight the _fucking Dark Titan_, you survive anyway? Oh, oh, or how about, 'Hey, friend, you're doomed to go on this mission sooner or later, and you will die slowly and no doubt painfully!'"

I stumbled back under the face of Selriona's anger. I'd never seen her get angry like this before. Not at me, anyway.

"So, what? I go to the Caverns of Time, go back in time, help your past self, and then die? Is that what happens?"

She grimaced. "I assume so. But Amanthe, it's like I said. It's a death sentence, so you don't have to do it now! You can lie about your age, you can go whenever, as long as you go _sometime_ - "

"I'm going now."

"What? But, you don't have to - "

"I want to. Selriona, I've lived four times longer than I should've. I've seen all sorts of, of wondrous things I never would've gotten to. The halls of the Titans, minions of Old Gods, whole other worlds. I had a husband, and a daughter. I've lived a good life, but I'm _tired_ damn it. Your mind's built to handle immortality, but mine's not."

She looked down. "I saw the signs. I just thought... I never thought they'd be much issue." Her wings drooped. "Are you sure? I mean, you go into the past, you're already dead. Amanthe, I'll miss you."

I swallowed hard. "I know, but I've lived for so long. I'm tired, the world's gotten predictable to an extent." I closed my eyes, swaying gently before opening them after a few moments. My voice was perfectly steady, thank you very much. "I want to see what's next."

She pressed her wings tight against her back, tusks _shwinging_ in and out of her jaw. "Alright," she said at last. "Alright. Make sure you don't tell myself you're my Dragonsworn. Make up something." She looked back at me, staring into my eyes. "Oh, but don't think for a moment you're going alone."

I tilted my head to the side and said something smart like, "Huh?"

"Amanthe, you'll go back and meet my past self. But this is the last time I'll ever get to see you," she said with an unusually high pitch. "I'm coming with you, alright?"

I nodded. "Alright. I understand," I said, even as icy horror gripped my guts at the thought of what fate awaited me.

* * *

><p>I think we should turn in for the night. That's what I tried to say, but all I managed was a chattering of teeth.<p>

"You're freezing. Here, let me fix that," Selriona said. She held out her human hands, and a rush of blue spilled out from them, reigniting the campfire inside our well-ventilated cave.

"T-T-Thanks," I said. "H-H-How come you aren't cold?" I chattered from where I was crouched.

Selriona eyed me, smirking. "Shapeshifting warm clothes," she said proudly, reaching up to adjust the collar on her coat. She looked back at the fire, already turning from twilight blue to regular orange. "Remind me again why I decided to go across Northrend, during an eternal winter, to reach Kalimdor?"

"Because despite not being able to get groundsick anymore, you don't want to spend any more time on a boat than is needed?"

She shuddered. "Right." She held out her hands to the fire, an action I repeated after a few seconds. "Hard to believe it's the middle of summer."

I scoffed. "I know. Damn it, and these are the Grizzly Hills. I don't even want to _imagine_ what Dragonblight will be like."

Selriona shivered, dropping her hands again. "All the bones..."

I brought one of my hands over to hers and gave a reassuring squeeze. "Relax. You've got another few millenia in you yet." I let go. "I mean, the Legion's power structure is annihilated. For the first time, Azeroth is free of any Old God. And the stray demons are scared stiff of us now that we've got a way to _permanently_ kill them."

"Yeah. What do you say we go to sleep? We've got a long day of hiking tomorrow."

"Hmm," I said, laying back in the bedroll my lower legs were cocooned in. "I agree. Night, you big sack of scales," I said, closing my eyes.

"You too, you squishy human."

I heard Selriona's breathing slow, but being a dragon, I knew better than to assume she'd fallen asleep. I myself, however, couldn't find it in me to conk out either. Between the cold of the Grizzly Hills and the warmth of the campfire, the danger of my mission and the knowledge that I'd succeed, I had far too much on my mind to simply _go_ to sleep.

I was going to die. And more than that, I was deliberately _walking_ towards my own demise, a notion that seemed outright surreal. The full gravity of the situation would probably hit me later. Not now, while every waking minute was spent walking with Selriona and alternating between playing some game, throwing snowballs, or chatting idly about anything, anything other than our destination. My arms tingled and my gut wrenched with the thought of that, even as I counted to sheep number seven-hundred eighty two.

I sighed, reclining my head. The past week had been one of the greatest I could remember. It reminded me of back in the Cataclysm when Selriona brought me to the Argent Crusade. Just the two of us. Only this trip would be so much longer... and it wouldn't have a happy ending.

_Stop thinking about it. You'll have plenty of time later to think about it._

Right. I fell back to sleep, dreaming about a red dragon chastising me for taking so long to figure out the puzzle box.

* * *

><p>"Tanaris has no business being <em>snowed<em> on," Selriona scowled in her hulking natural form.

I opened my mouth from where I sat on her back, almost in a daze, and swallowed a large clump of poofy snowflakes. "You're telling me. Dustwallow has an excuse, but _Tanaris?_"

"I guess it makes sense if you think about it," she said, padding over the blackened stone. "I mean, it _is_ right next to Un'goro, it stands to reason it would've been hit harder than any other area." She raised a foreleg, looking down at the cold remains of the pyroclastic flow that had swept over the desert half a decade prior. "I mean, look at this stuff!"

I grunted, looking around for the umpteenth time. Nothing had changed in the last five minutes; the former desert was still covered in an absurdly thick layer of volcanic debris. Before us was what looked like a shattered bowl of stone, like a giant had accidentally dropped a clay bowl and tried to reconstruct it. My throat clenched so hard I coughed whenever I looked that way. Desperate to take my eyes off the approaching area, I rubbed my sore legs. Sure, it was preferable to walking all this way on my own, but that didn't mean Selriona had to grab me with her fangs and sling me onto her back just because I'd gotten tired. And plate-like scales don't exactly make for a comfortable seat.

Inevitably, though, Selriona reached an entryway to the bowl of earth and walked inside, squeezing through the hidden pass. I slid off her back and levitated to the ground, wincing as my sore legs tapped against the solid volcanic rock. There was a wide path the lead up to the side of one mountain, where there was a hole carved straight into the mountain. I tried to peer into it, but my vision always burred when I tried; it was a lot like trying to look directly at the sun.

We walked up silently to it. Selriona stopped a little ways away, craning her head so that it was level with the entrance to what had to be the Caverns of Time. I climbed up the side of the hill and stood before the entry, which no longer tried to repel my gaze. Inside was a tunnel of sand, leading down into the depths of Tanaris. Blue and red rivers of energy flowed along the ceiling in undulating strips. As I watched, one of the filaments burst, as if a drop of water had fallen into the middle, leaving a black void. Amber sparkles formed around it, sealing the gap and leaving the streams untouched. The floor was made of sand, smooth grained sand so fine I couldn't make out the individual pieces of stone.

Across the entrance was what could best be described as a spider's web. The geometric pattern wasn't like a spiral, however, more of alternating diamonds that formed a barrier across the entry. I held a hand out towards it; the web of silver light bent in. I moved my hand back, and it relaxed.

I turned around, a stone forming in my throat and dropping to my stomach. "Well, this is it," I said nervously, trying my hardest to meet Selriona's eyes. The daggers as my waist and the stone tablet tucked away in my robes weighed as much as an Aspect.

She flicked her tusks out and drew them back in, bowing her head. "Yeah," she whispered in Common. "I guess this is goodbye." She looked back at me. "Amanthe, I'm going to tell you right now. Thank you. For everything. For letting me stay in your home when I was a drake, keeping me hidden, saving me from the Epoch Hunter, supporting me when I found out Valiona died, coming back after the Cataclysm, taking care of Ialion in Orgrimmar, saving me from the Legion, curing my ground sickness, being there for me when I was grounded. I - thank you so much, Amanthe. For everything you've ever done for me."

"Well then let me tell you too," I said. Oh dear, there was something in my eyes. "Thank you. You saved me in the Deeprun tram, got me out of Stormwind when I was accused of being a cultist, saved my brother when he fell off that island in Nagrand, and you brought me to the Argent Crusade. You saved the world and took me in, helped me with Orgrimmar, saved _me_ from the Legion. I just, thank you, Selriona. You're my best friend."

With a whimper, Selriona pushed her snout towards me, nuzzling my stomach. I wrapped my arms around it, shaking silently with her.

"I'm gonna miss you," she said.

"Yeah," I said quietly, wiping away something that was _not_ a tear from my cheek. "Take care, you big sack of scales."

She opened her mouth, and reconsidered her words. "Enjoy yourself, you squishy human." She pulled away, wiping her head with the back of her left forepaw. "Well, lets not make this anymore painful than it needs to be." She gestured with a head towards the Caverns.

I nodded, and walked there. The silvery webs bent inwards as I approached. I turned around, taking one last look at Selriona, with her deep purple scales, various scars and war-shattered body parts. Her slit pupils, heavy indigo eyes. I blinked hard, and then turned around and stepped into the Caverns of Time.

Immediately it grew dark. Turning around, I saw that where the cloudy skies of Tanaris had been earlier, was a slab of rock sealing off the outside world, the only illumination coming from the sand beneath my robes and the filaments of light above. I was alone.

In addition, it was suddenly so _quiet._ Without any real _link_ to Selriona, our telepathic bond just sorta... stopped existing. For ages now I'd been used to the ever-so quiet whispering of her background thoughts, too faint to make out, every second of every day. Now that it was gone... I was terrified. It was all so eerie.

I dropped to my knees, tracing my fingers in the sand. As I did, I thought I felt some sort of protective magic wash over me, but I paid it no mind. After a few minutes of steeling my nerves, I got up and headed deeper into the Caverns, which stretched oddly as I approached, as if I'd never get there but suddenly I did. I don't know how long I walked, and to be honest the answer probably couldn't be expressed in numbers. Every now and again I'd pass a patrol of bronze drakonids, which would either stoically ignore me, or nod once in my direction. They knew why I was there. They knew what would happen.

The suffocating silence seemed to deepen as I went on, meter by meter, further into the Caverns of Time. As I walked, I noticed that the tunnel before me abruptly _stopped_, replaced by a stone wall. A few moments of investigation revealed that the tunnel instead curved down at a perfect ninety degrees. I frowned, and jumped down, readying a levitate.

It wasn't needed, as the world flipped, gravity altered, and I found myself belly-flopping onto the sand. "Damn gravity tricks," I muttered, pulling myself to my feet and rubbing my abdomen. As I continued on, passing drakonids that looked at me all-too knowingly, I noticed a change in the atmosphere. Looking to my right, I noticed the cause. I then proceeded to spend several minutes trying to pick up my bottom jaw from where it had dropped.

The entire left wall was _gone_, the stone replaced by a window into the Great Dark Beyond. Rings and rows of asteroids tumbled through the heavens against a pale red backdrop, planets and rivers of magic and stars and galaxies and _who knew_ what else forming a web of shining sparkles that seemed to grow as I watched, encompassing -

I tore my gaze away from the window and proceeded on. Before too long, I came upon a narrow turn. A drake would have trouble squeezing through, but I had no issue.

I almost forgot how to breathe.

The main chamber was maybe a kilometer across, and would have been a rough half-sphere if not for the fact that it looked like someone had broken off the top half and opened it into the Great Dark beyond. Drakonids patrolled everywhere, and in the center was a dial with a bronze dragon male resting on it. On the dial floated an enormous apparatus with several glass chambers suspended by, go figure, bronze. Sand filled the smaller glass chambers near the top and bottom, which flowed into a central, larger chamber. This resulted in the bottom half having sand flowing up, but seeing as how the universe was literally right there infront of me, I decided to let it slide. What was curious, however, was that the sand never ran out, but never overflowed either, it stayed a constant level.

For an instant eternity I just sat there, watching the Bronze Flight's center of operations before I remembered I had a _job_ to do. Pulling my legs forward, I kept going.

Suddenly they weighed a ton. I was going to meet up with Selriona's past self now. What would I say? What would she say? What was my time's version of her doing? How was she coping? She'd essentially sent me off to my death.

I didn't even notice when I circled around the main chamber and reached the other side. For all I knew, it could very well have only taken one second.

There they were. Mariel, Ellemayne and Fluffy, _Katalyn_, and Droga. There was a gnome with them I assumed to be Chronormu. And there _she_ was.

I hardly recognized her. Her deep blue scales, so different than the purple I was used to. Different horns, no tusks to unsheathe. Her left wing intact, no horns shattered. I crossed the distance, trudging my feet, head bowed.

"Amanthe?" she asked suddenly.

I looked up at her, and forced myself to smile. "Hey, Selriona," I whispered.

"Amanthe, what are you doing here?"

"It's a long, long story. We'll have plenty of time in Hyjal, I hope." But how much time would I have? How long would this mission last before my part in it came to its gruesome end?

"It's so good to see you, how long has it been since you last saw me?"

"Little more than an hour, by my internal clock. But that doesn't mean a lot in here, does it?"

"Wait, how old are you?"

"I'm about three centuries old, little age magic." I wiggled my fingers, smiling.

Selriona's eyes widened. Titans, it was so hard to think of this young, _young_ drake as Selriona. She was, what, five years old? Six? I knew whelps older than her. "Oh, good to know," she said.

Chronormu clapped. "Alright then, that's everyone. Now, here's what's going to happen. Aeonus' wards are already in place, so the tunnel here won't be able to bring you directly to the time you need. I'm bringing you as close as I can, which is three days off and at the very top of the mountain. You'll need to work your way down the mountain towards Sulfuron Keep while fending off any Infinite that attack you. The battle for Hyjal will be in full bloom, so you'll have to be careful while you make your way down the mountain. Once you're near the keep, place this beacon…"

Chornormu held out her hand, and some of the sand on the ground rose, swirling in her hands to form a device. It was a gray hexagon, with a little hemisphere in the middle on one side, surrounded by nine small yellow triangles. The hemisphere glowed with bronze light.

"… on the ground, and activate it. I'll be able to come through then and help you. Your future selves have told me what happens there. Selriona, you'll need to take care of the drake that slowed you down, and then 'merge' with your past self. You'll know how to do it when you have to."

Selriona nodded. "Understood."

"You five will have to battle Aeonus. You will NOT be able to kill him, though. He's destined to die in the Black Morass." Chronormu sighed. "Simply cause him to retreat. I will be there to handle... Myself."

We all shouted, "What?!"

The disguised gnome nodded. "At some point in the future, I become one of the Infinite. I go to Hyjal and try to kill Verthelion, but my bronze self stops my Infinite self, killing her. I kill myself, essentially." She shuddered.

Droga nodded, seemingly understanding the situation. I didn't miss his amused glance in my direction. "Alright, so we need to enter Hyjal, escort Selriona to Sulfuron Keep and plant the beacon. You'll deal with your Infinite self, Selriona deals with her drake, and we handle Aeonus. Sounds simple enough."

It was Ellemayne's turn to nod. "Yes, it does. We have three days to reach the location, if I am correct. However, we will probably be besieged by the Infinite, not to mention being caught in the crossfire of the battle. We will have to move quickly."

"Why couldn't I just fly them down to the keep?" Selriona asked.

Before I could respond with a _'Yeah, why not?'_ Katalyn shook her head and responded. "Are you insane? Splitting up like that would make us prime targets for Infinite assassination. We need to stick together, and unless you want to try to fly all five of us and Ellemayne's pet —"

"His name is Fluffy!" Ellemayne said indignantly, leaning down next to the gray mountain lion and fawning over him.

I sighed. I didn't recognize these people. Either they were from before the Legion's invasion, or they had seriously loosened up since then. I walked next to Selriona and whispered into her ear-plate. "We are doomed," I said, noting how strange it was to be eye level with her again.

She laughed. "Yes, yes we are."

Katalyn sighed. "Yes, Fluffy. As I was saying, we need to stick together. And that means taking the long way around. We should get going soon. Pardon the pun, but time is of the essence."

Mariel snickered.

Chronormu nodded in approval. "Walk that way through the tunnel, you'll arrive at your destination. It'll close behind you." She handed the beacon to Droga. "Remember, plant this at Sulfuron Keep. I'll come and aid you. Other than that though, you are on your own. Aeonus will be operating from inside a time pocket. Ellemayne, you know what that is like. I operated from one in Andorhal. You'll know how to find it. Remember, this is our emergency back up plan. Failure isn't an option. If you fail, a paradox will occur, and that will shatter our universe, and we will ALL die."

Ellemayne took the lead. "Alright team, lets move," she said, Fluffy right next to her.

Mariel turned to his felhound and clenched a fist. As if bitten, the demon yipped and began to follow him. The other two followed after, but I remained behind with Selriona.

I sighed, and tried to make small talk with her. After all, I wouldn't get any chances to do so... ever again. "Just like old times, huh?"

"Oh, that's, that's right. It's not 'old times' for you yet." I grinned nervously.

"Amanthe, is something wrong? You seem quiet, and all your smiles look forced."

I took a shaky breath. "No, no nothing's wrong. I'm just nervous. I mean, the last time I've fought the Infinite was three centuries ago for me."

"You're lying about why you're nervous."

I laughed anxiously. Damn it, did she already know? "Looks like the shoe's on the other foot, isn't it? Look, don't worry about me. We're going to go find Verthelion, we're going to make sure your past self saves him, everything is going to be just fine —" my voice rose to a squeak near the end.

We kept walking through the tunnel, and soon the blue streams of energy faded. The desert smell turned to the smell of woods and nature and thin air. The four members of the Liberality Confederacy stopped right before the exit, a birdsong echoing down the tunnel. Selriona walked up and looked down, but I knew where we were. I'd been here before; I almost died here several times. We were in Hyjal, high above the World Tree. One kilometer, maybe two.

Katalyn whistled, but I wasn't impressed by the drop.

The warlock beside us scratched his head. "Okay, well, now what?"

I nodded. "Well, Selriona can go down no problem, and I can give the rest of us a levitation enchantment. We can drift down."

Ellemayne motioned her agreement. "A fine plan. Let's get going. From my past experiences in the caverns of the bronze, our time has already started ticking away."

"One second, I just need to prepare." I took a deep breath, holding my hands out to the sides, rapidly muttering words, casting a levitation enchantment on everyone except Selriona. I floated over to the edge of the tunnel, and looked down.

Droga huffed.

"We're wasting time," he said. "Let's go and be done with this!" He jumped, and started floating down. The others were right behind him. Mariel shoved his felhound down. Ellemayne picked Fluffy up in her arms as best she could and stepped over the side. Katalyn jumped, spinning in the air, while I gracefully floated down. I heard Selriona flapping from above me. Looking back at her, I saw that the tunnel was gone.

I was in the past now.

It really hit me then. I was three hundred years in the past. This was the Cataclysm. Here, the Twilight Dragonflight was the enemy. Here, those who showed off twilight fire were shot first and _axed_ questions later. There were only four sane Aspects, one of them ridiculously new to his job, and none of them would vouch for a twilight drake. Hells, we were here so that Selriona could save her mate from _Ysera._

I focused my thoughts. It didn't matter. The mere fact that Selriona's future self had sent me back ensured success. Right? But, couldn't the Infinite undo that success? But then they would never have to undo their success, or was that past fixed?

I found Selriona's gaze, but instantly looked the other way. Titans, it was _weird_ to see her as a drake again. As a _teenager._

Already, I was so confused by time travel, and I didn't even notice when we landed. While everyone else got their bearings, Selriona looked around the rim crater of Nordrassil. She tilted her head, perhaps hearing something with her enhanced senses.

The ground shook, and we all took battle stances. Before us, a trio of dragon-sized portals opened, and a whoosh signaled one behind us. Each of the portals was black with a dull bronze outline, and dull amber spirals within.

The bald orc growled. "Not a step on Hyjal, and already we are attacked?"

Three dragonspawn came from each of the side portals, and suddenly I was reminded just what the Infinite dragonkin looked like. Scales black as coal, absorbing light, with a similar miasma around them. Arcane cracks in their bodies, leaking temporal energy, showing off how truly broken they were. I heard two thuds come from the portal behind me, and from the middle portal came the leader. He could've been General Vajarn, except he wasn't purple, anything but. His wings were so large, they touched the two portals next to him.

"Why do you protect the twilight drake?" he asked with a _horrible_ echo. Every individual word echoed half a dozen times after he said it, overlapping with the other echoes and the rest of his sentence. "Do you not remember the horror their Flight has caused, the unspeakable atrocities under their master? You can still stop it. Flee here, and your lives will continue without interference."

_Nice try, bud. They save the world._

Echoing my thoughts, Droga laughed, drawing his sword and shield. "Nice try, scum. We know that their fate is in our best interests. Defend yourself! Lok'tar ogar!"

He charged.

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><p><strong><strong>'Puts on Back to the Future theme music'<strong>_  
><em>**

**Review, let me know what you think!**


	51. Chapter 51:Cataclysmic War

**Disclaimer: I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Thanks to dharak for being my beta.**

**Chapter published 8/23/13**

**... that awkward moment when your healer's a shadow priest.**

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><p>Amanthe<p>

Instantly, the Liberality Confederacy charged.

Droga, warrior he is, went straight for the general. Katalyn, Fluffy, and Mariel's felhound went for the smaller dragonspawn while Ellemayne took to a ledge and began shooting them with her magical bow. Mariel seemed to be casting a vicious spell, misty shadows swirling around his hands and darkening the air, and Selriona was frozen, transfixed.

Wasting no time, I turned around to see the drakonids, and began to cast my spell. It was an extremely forbidden spell, but I cared little for the laws of the Alliance and Horde. I closed my eyes...

... and opened the drakonid's.

Instantly, my sight sharpened and distorted. I could see things like never before. But this wasn't just mind vision. This was complete and total control. I could smell the terror on Selriona, the burning of wood, the blood of night elves, and I could hear every single breath we each took. To my horror, even the Infinite's _breaths_ echoed. Every blade of grass was sharp, every scale on the other drakonid. The spear's weight was immense, but the controlled dragonkin's muscles lifted it like it was a feather. On top of all that, my thoughts were... displaced. Normally one's thoughts are in their head; after all, that's where the brain is. But looking through the drakonid's eyes, I felt my thoughts coming from the side, from where my body was comatose in channeling. To say the experience was surreal would be putting it lightly.

The drakonid. Right. Focus.

I dropped to the ground and swung my spear in a wide arc, tripping the other. As it fell I got back up and tried to sink my spear into its chest.

It rolled to the side and lashed upwards, the tip of its weapon leaving a gash in my left leg. I didn't feel the impact, simply jerked back from the force of it. The way I saw it, there was no reason to be on the defensive with the drakonid I controlled. It was, after all, the enemy.

I thrust my spear forward, only for it to be batted out of the way by the other, bending my wrist in what was surely a painful way. I ignored it and the subsequent slash to the chest, lashing out with 'my' weapon again. It blocked it, but without waiting I stepped closer and kicked it in the knee. The drakonid buckled, and I took that opportunity to slash its throat open.

Or at least _attempt_ to. It raised its vertically in time to block my horizontal attack, then kicked me in the stomach. My drakonid flew back, but I just stood it right back up. Judging by the strange sensations in its chest, it had a broken rib. But that didn't stop me from ordering it to keep fighting.

It was a very intense fight. I had next to no experience with weapons; the only experience I _did_ have was with the two daggers I'd stolen from the Burning Legion during the invasion. My opponent, on the other hand, not only knew their way around a spear, but also knew their way around a _drakonid body,_ a fact that was driven home when I got slammed in the gut by their tail. I made my drakonid roar, despite feeling no pain, and attacked it. I hardly even noticed when Ellemayne began to help by shooting it, all I was focused on was keeping this drakonid busy.

I swung up, and it caught my spear in one hand. It pushed the spear to the side, throwing me off balance, and pushed its other arm forward. There was a slick ripping noise, and I glanced down to see the Infinite's spear buried in my heart. Suddenly the world flashed brilliant white, and I was myself again, watching as a drakonid toppled back and the other one pulled its spear out from its comrade.

Before I could do anything else, Mariel finished his spell.

The remaining drakonid collapsed to his knees, panting heavily, as the cracks on his skin shimmered and blacked out repeatedly. Wheeling around, I saw the only remaining dragonspawn - the general - was being assaulted by clouds of shadows, buzzing around him like a swarm of insects. As I watched, both dragons' flesh dissolved in a sickening mass of gore, until there was nothing left but bleached bones.

After regrouping, Ellemayne looked Mariel's way. "Mariel, what in the name of Elune did you do?"

"Oh, just a little spell I like to call Atrocity. Why?" he asked, flashing a grin that would get his face smashed in at a bar.

Ellemayne tapped her bow's middle. "And what exactly does it do?"

"Well, it corrupts anyone I want it to nearby, eating away at them." I suppressed a shiver. _Eating away at them._ What kind of sick power is that?

"So essentially it's the same as that corrupting spell you use, but it strikes multiple foes at once?" Ellemayne asked.

"Yup!" The blood elf beamed, adjusting his red robes.

Katalyn spoke up, making us turn to her. "I don't want to interrupt your conversation, but we have a problem!"

Droga was on his back, the spikes on his armor digging into the soft earth, Katalyn over him. I looked at him, and I gasped, instantly seeing what was wrong. "His arm!" I ran over to him. "Katalyn, do you have something that heals?"

Katalyn shook her head, flashing me a Look. "No, I only have poison and venom."

I swore vigorously. Of course, the rogue wouldn't have anything _useful. _"Alright, I can try to heal it." I looked down at the orc. "Droga, hold still."

He huffed. "It's nothing."

"Your arm is broken and bent in the opposite direction, now hold still!" I moved my arm over his, peeling off the armor. Healing always works better if you can see what you're focused on. I laid my hand against the broken arm, ignoring the way the muscles stiffened, and focused, closing my eyes. But something was wrong. There was something... resisting. My healing magic had never been especially strong, but a broken bone should've been well within my abilities. It was almost like the Holy Light was just washing off of Droga.

I took my hand off, taking deep breaths, piecing things together. One glance at the dragonspawn general's axe, gleaming with shadows, confirms it. "It's no use. That axe had some enchantment on it. I can't heal your arm magically. You'll just need to mend."

"Step aside, Amanthe," Ellemayne said. "This is my area of expertise."

"I'm fine."

"No, you are not," she scolded him. "A broken bone is often sharp, and moving around can cause the sharp edges to puncture blood vessels, resulting in internal bleeding. Your arm _has_ to be treated."

"Well, you're the one who's centuries old. Fine." With that permission given, Ellemayne wrenched his arm into more or less a normal position. To his credit, Droga only grunted.

"We'll need to put that in a cast, your armor will be too hard on the arm while it heals. We'll also need to find a way to remove the enchantment, so that Amanthe can mend the bone."

I nodded, seeing the logic. "We can go to the Green flight. Well, Selriona and I can't, but you four can - "

"NO!" I was taken aback by Katalyn's rebuttal. "Amanthe, have I not gone over this already? We cannot split up. You and Mariel can find a way to remove the magic, meanwhile Ellemayne can keep the injury from worsening, she's got enough survival training to do that. We'll circle around the World Tree and continue down. Remember what Chromie said: failure is NOT an option" We all nodded. I assumed Chromie was Chronormu. "Alright then. Let's move" Katalyn started leading us around the 'bowl' of the World Tree, avoiding the Guardians, but Ellemayne quickly took the lead.

"Not so fast, Katalyn, I'm the leader here, remember?"

"Like hells you are. I am of noble birth!" Wow, really Katalyn? Now that there's no Dark Titan you're just going to be like_ that?_

"And I am over five hundred years old. I have far more experience in leading than you, ergo, I am leading." Ellemayne and Katalyn continued to bicker, Fluffy in between them. Droga and Mariel walked silently next to each other, Droga's presence shutting him up. Selriona fell to the back, padding alongside me. I glanced her way, trying to avoid her eyes.

"You'd better go into a mortal form. Just in case the Guardians of Hyjal see us," I said.

She nodded. "True." With a deep breath, she reverted to her human form. I stiffened. I didn't realize it until now, but over the years Selriona's human form had changed. This version of her was... younger. Not as pale, fewer lines around her eyes. It served as a well and true reminder that I was in the past, and that I was going to die here.

"You had better be in the middle," Droga said to her. If he was in any pain from his arm, it didn't show. "Don't want any Infinite assassins sneaking up behind you."

We shuffled about, so that Droga, Mariel, and his felhound took the rear, with Selriona and I right behind Katalyn, Ellemayne and Fluffy.

"Amanthe, please just tell me, what's going on with you?"

I jolted at the unexpected question. I couldn't let her know. Not now. Selriona didn't know at this point, I was sure of it. "Nothing! There is _nothing_ going on with me! Selriona, just worry about yourself, alright?"

"Amanthe, you're my friend, and after all the times you worried about me, I'm repaying the favor. What is wrong?"

I grimaced. I couldn't lie, not to her face. Something vague then. I looked to her, taking care to make eye contact. "You'll find out in a few days." And that was that. She didn't press any more. We continued the trip in silence, until Ellemayne moved to a nearby tree and began to pick herbs from around it. After gathering those, she rummaged around in the bag she'd brought before pulling out a flask of water and diminutive glass vial. She combined the water and herbs in the vial, shook it well, and turned to our injured warrior.

"We should stop for now," she said. "I can make a healing mixture for the bone, but I need a fire."

Mariel stepped forward confidently. "Allow me!"

He assembled a few twigs and rocks into a fire pit, and began to channel magic. "Stand back everyone!" He shot out his hands, fire crackling around his fingertips. A river of fire leaped out and snaked through the air, and incinerated a nearby tree. "My bad!" Another incinerating stream of fire, setting the grass ablaze. Luckily, there were lines burned in the grass already, so the fire couldn't spread too much. "Butterfingers! Alright, third time's the charm!" The poor, poor squirrel. "This time, this time for sure!" This time, the intense fire bounced along the rocks of his fire pit, but enough got in to set the twigs aflame. As one, we looked from Mariel to the flames, and rested our heads in our palms.

He gave us his best innocent look. "What? It worked!"

Ellemayne smacked him across the face with her bow."_You idiot!_ Do you _want _to attract the Green Fight? Furthermore, are you _trying_ to burn down the world tree?"

"It was an innocent mistake! Honest!"

"Tell that to the animals you just killed." The kaldorei turned away from Mariel in a huff and began to heat up the contents of the vial using the magical fire. After a few minutes of rearranging the contents of the vial, and everyone else placing soil onto the flames to try and snuff them out, Ellemayne stood. "Got it. Droga, here drink this." He did so. "Alright, let's go before the guardians get here -"

"We're already here," came the tolling of a death knell.

The warlock's eye twitched. "Aw shit."

With their backs to the World Tree, placing themselves between it and us, were twenty-odd night elves, each in battle stances with razor sharp, circular glaives. One of them stood before the others, one with silver hair tied back in a ponytail instead of short-cut green, steel in her eyes. Unlike the others, she had two glaives.

I leaned over to whisper in Selriona's ear. "Get ready to use your true form. It'll make you harder to kill." She nodded in understanding.

Katalyn tried to defuse the situation. "Guardians, it was an honest mistake. _Mariel_ here has no idea how to aim his fire spell." When she said the word 'fire' about half of the guardians, leader included, flinched. That's right, Ragnaros's siege was very brutal.

"And why, pray tell, was he using a fire spell? Furthermore, why are those two in cultist robes?" the leader asked, pointing to Selriona and I. I looked down at myself. Oops. Katalyn started to open her mouth, but the night elf would have none of it. "Do not bother, we all ready know. Attack!" All twenty night elves charged. With a flurry of twilight flame, Selriona transformed into her drake self. Mariel launched a red splinter of magic at them, one I recognized as a seed of corruption, but it froze in mid air.

"Shit!" he exclaimed. "There's an Infinite among them!"

I swore. Thinking fast, I reached into my robes, searching for the tablet. I found it and pulled it out. If we could get the elves focused on the Infinite instead, the maybe we could talk them down.

"Guardians and usurpers," I read, stumbling over the words in my haste. "Fiends and controllers, reveal the faces of your minions, reveal the faces of the chosen of the shapers. Reveal the truth, reveal the falsehoods, show the cursed their wardens." Just as before, there was a surge of magic radiating outward, and suddenly ten of the Guardians fell, clutching their heads, and transformed into Infinite dragonspawn, being stared at by the _real_ night elves.

Droga growled. "They're everywhere..."

Before anything else could happen, Selriona cracked open her maw and released a blanket of twilight flames. Unfortunately, she accidentally - maybe intentionally? - immolated more kaldorei than Infinite.

_'Protect Selriona,'_ I thought. _'Everything else is priority two.' _"Selriona!" I shouted. "Fly up!"

"Got it!" she returned, taking to the air. Mariel cast the same curse repeatedly, each time making a Guardian fall to the ground in indomitable exhaustion. Droga fought them off as best he could with one arm, Ellemayne used her bow as a melee weapon with surprising efficiency, and Katalyn hopped in between the shadows, each time appearing and attacking a dragonspawn before vanishing to continue her killing spree.

Three dragonspawn went for me. I took out my daggers, forgetting about the stone tablet. I quickly shielded myself, and began fending them off. However, I didn't see any openings. After seeing what their weapons had done to Droga, I didn't want to chance their weapons having some sort of weird shield-piercing abilities. I fought them off as best I could, parrying one strike only to deflect another, and shift some of my shield's strength to block the third's sneak attack. As it was, I could barely keep up, the _whoosh_ of swords and axes filling my ears as they always came just a bit too close for comfort.

Suddenly, the female dragonspawn was engulfed in blue and fell down. In another instant, so was the next one.

"AH!"

My shield flickered out of existence as a massive pain flared in my right arm.

"Amanthe!" Selriona exclaimed from where she'd dive-bombed the final dragonspawn, shifting back to mortal form. "Are you alright?"

I grimaced. "Ah, yeah. I just need to heal it." I waved my left hand over the bleeding wound, but nothing happened. Nor did anything happen the second time. Without warning, Katalyn took my arm in her hands and began to look it over.

"That's pretty deep, but not dangerous, since it's narrow. There's a problem though. There's wound poison in it, she's not going to be able to heal it. Also, it's going to hurt like a bitch." On cue, the pain flared, prompting me to shriek once. Wound poison. Of course, they didn't all need fancy weapon enchantments like the generals; simple wound poison, bane of medics everywhere, could work just as well.

I bit my lip, suppressing an aggravated cry. "At this rate we'll never reach the Shrine of Aessina, much less Sulfuron Keep."

Selriona turned to the worgen. "Can't you make an anti-venom for it?"

She shook her head. "Not with venom this potent. Let me tell you, whoever the Infinite have making their poisons." She let out a low whistle. "They're something else, I'll tell you that."

The drake raised an eyebrow. "And you can tell all that just by looking at the wound."

"I can. Also by smelling it."

I grunted. Of course she would. She's a master rogue and a worgen to boot. I ground my teeth together, holding my injured arm with my left. "I'll just have to tough it out. Come on, let's go before we have the entire Green Flight on us."

The other gathered around. Mariel, sprightly Mariel, was eager to get away from the scene of the crime. "Alrighty, let's get going then. We have what, three days? It's noon now, so we'd better get marching!" He took one step and collapsed face first. His felhound vanished with a _poof_, leaving us staring at Mariel, who had a green handle sticking out of the back of his neck.

After a moment of being stunned, Ellemayne leaped forward. "Mariel!" She looked up; most of the night elves were unconscious, and all of the Infinite were dead. However, one Guardian had pushed herself up to no doubt throw the knife. Quick as a flash, Ellemayne had her bow, Thori'dal, up. She pulled back the string, a blunt arrow forming in place. She released it, and it slammed into the night elf's head, knocking them out.

Droga knelt next to Mariel's still body, shaking his head. I couldn't believe it. Mariel, who dropped infernal's onto demons. Mariel, who'd outsmarted the Watchers. Mariel, who'd _fought against Sargeras and lived to tell the tale, _twice, had been killed by a night elf. "Poor kid. Well, we don't have time to mourn him. We need to go." I nodded silently, and soon we departed from the small brush fire.

Selriona came up next to me. "What were those tablets you read?"

Crap.

Thinking quickly, I replied, "They were these magical things. I'd seen a Kingslayer use one of them to reveal a dragon hiding in human form, and I only recently got one. Looks like it came in handy, huh?"

There. Only partially a lie. The only part that wasn't true was having seen a Kingslayer use one before.

She sighed. "They did. The surprise probably slowed down the night elves. Hey, how's your arm?" I winced at that, the pain flaring.

"Fine. I'd better go over to Droga and find a way to fix his arm." Eager to get away from her and the inevitable barrage of questions, I closed in on Droga.

"Hey," I said as we made our way around the World Tree.

"Hello, Amanthe," he returned. "Fancy seeing you here."

"Yeah. Mind if I look at your arm?" I asked.

He rolled his eyes. "Fine, go right ahead."

"Thank you." I began to inspect the magic on his broken arm. It wasn't an anti-healing enchantment like I'd thought. It was simply anti-magic, which made dispelling it all the more difficult. It had multiple protective enchantments on it. Nothing I couldn't unravel, given time. It would be a challenge, but I'd solved the Puzzle Box, hadn't I? I just had to find the right spot to inject the dispelling energies, and the whole matrix would unravel from there. It helped that the matrix of energy surrounding Droga was light; he'd only been treated to a light touch of the magic.

Suddenly we stopped, the sun already setting. How long had I been examining Droga's arm?

"The Circle of Cinders," Ellemayne whispered. "Oh the memories. So odd, seeing it from this perspective." Circles of ringed ash were scattered throughout, where fire elementals had probably once raged, but now only their husks remained, and plants had already begun to reclaim the soil. Druids were all around in the rings of ash, helping to nurture the resilient life forms that tried to live there. Some waved their hands over the plants, any green light hidden from the distance. Others walked back and forth, giving the others tiny acorns, seeds, and other ingredients for their rituals. Ellemayne took one look at the sun, or rather, the lack thereof.

"We can probably make it to the end of the Circle," she said. "But we'll need to stop there for the night. We can't move in this dark, not with the Infinite being as well suited to shadows as they are." The others nodded. I did so as well, but my heart wasn't into it. We made our way through the ashes, carefully avoiding the druid patrols. We already had our hands full with the Infinite, we did _not_ need the Green Dragonflight going out of their way to kill this particular twilight drake.

Droga drifted back to Selriona, leaving me alone with my thoughts. I didn't have any. I kept visualizing the anti-healing enchantment, sometimes doing some work on it, but I made little progress. Before I knew it, we'd climbed up an isolated hillside, Selriona groaning behind me. I heard her kick a rock.

"We should set up camp here." Ellemayne rolled her shoulders. "Here's the watch: We each stay up for one hour, and then wake up the next person. Order is me, Amanthe, Droga, Selriona, and Katalyn. That way we should be safe against any sneak attacks." She took off her pack, scratching behind her pet's ears as she fumbled through it for something. "But first, we need to eat. Good thing I brought provisions." Before too long, she'd taken out items from her pack and assembled three dull blue tents, and created a fire pit. She was about to start a fire in it when Selriona launched a fireball into the wood.

"Right," she said, pointing at the dragon. "Twilight drake. Fire. Got it. Anyway, here's the provisions. They taste like shit, but they'll keep you hydrated and fed." She passed out six small, round, colorless pellets, and handed them out. I eyed mine oddly as Ellemayne tried to get her pet to eat it. Finally, I took a nibble.

I gagged.

It tasted like nothing I'd ever had before. It was tasteless, foul, oily and just all around _repulsive._ Over the course of several excruciating minutes, I choked it down.

Ellemayne approached a tent. "Alright, good night everyone. Amanthe, I'll wake you up once it's your turn. Be careful, I'll be setting traps around camp."

I nodded. "Got it." Selriona followed after me into her tent. I laid down on my back, and instantly fell asleep.

_Slap. _My eyes snapped open, rapidly adjust to reveal Ellemayne in the tent with me. "Hey, your turn," she said simply before leaving for her own tent.

I sat up, rubbing my eyes. "Good night to you too," I muttered.

Walking out, I noticed the campfire was burning low. I pulled a few more pieces of timber onto it, and held out my right hand. Slimy, cold twilight flame enveloped it, and condensed into a tiny pebble in my palm. The pebble grew larger and larger until I deemed it of sufficient size, and then unleashed the fireball. The new wood blazed bright blue for a moment before transforming to pure orange. I found a seat, and began my one hour watch.

My thoughts turned to the Infinite. Exactly what was I _up _against here? If the Infinite could manipulate space and time itself, open portals to any place at any moment, what hope did we possibly have? What was stopping them from assaulting us every second of the way? Even provided we lost them, they existed outside the time stream. It would take them, by my view, literally no time at all to find us anywhere we went in the world, and then come for us. And even if we won, so what? Selriona had said originally, she failed and Verthelion died. The Bronze were undoing their failure here. What was to stop the Infinite from undoing their failure once we saved Verthelion?

I didn't like that thought. "I'm here. I remember Verthelion. We save him." But if time was immutable, then what was the purpose of the Bronze? If our victory was set in stone, there was no need to worry. If ours was set in stone, then the original victory of the Infinite, and the _even more_ original victory of Selriona without interference from either party would be impossible to challenge.

Clearly, that wasn't the case. It meant we could lose. Time could change, and everything would fall apart. Verthelion would die, Selriona soon after. Even if Deathwing was still brought low, the Old Gods would never be chained by the Twilight Blessing upon Nordrassil. Tsa'thannon would recover his strength and ravage the world. We wouldn't call Algalon, and wouldn't know how to kill him without destroying the world. Game over.

I groaned and rubbed my temples. It hurt too much to think about time. And stuff. And time. I waited out the rest of my shift, and then went to go find Droga. He awoke with barely a grunt, letting me retire to Selriona's tent, where I promptly passed out again.

Suddenly, Selriona was above me in her human form, shaking me awake. "Get up! Get up! There's an intruder!"

All vestiges of sleep left me in a moment, and I was outside in a heartbeat. Everyone else was already up, save for Ellemayne. Katalyn had a night elf at knife point. Something about her seemed strangely familiar, despite the colors of her hair and armor, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

The worgen growled. "Who are you? How did you get through the traps?" The elf tossed her hair, and remained silent. This only made Katalyn snarl. "Answer me, girl."

"The traps were difficult, but I got through them. As for who I am, all YOU need to know is that I'm one of the Kingslayers." I smirked. Oh no, whatever shall we do?

I leaned over to whisper to Droga. "What are we going to do? Should we tell her?"

Droga shook his head. "No, we should just persuade her we're not against her." We turned to her, and Droga continued speaking. "How did you find our camp? Who do you think we are?"

"Hmmph. I saw a flash of dark blue fire, I came to investigate."

Selriona blushed, but I got the impression that it was instead my flame that she'd noticed. Still, that voice was so familiar...

Katalyn's voice was dangerously calm. "And how long ago was this?"

"About two hours ago." Oh hells, it was certainly me then. "I know you're cultists. I can tell from the robes on her/" She pointed towards me. "And her." The night elf pointed towards Selriona. At that moment, with a sense of brilliant timing, Ellemayne finally woke up and walked out of her tent.

She looked at the night elf. "What's going on here?"

"I found her approaching us," Selriona said.

"Well why didn't you wake me up?"

"I tried. Believe me, I _tried._"

"Oh. Well, let me take a look at her" Ellemayne walked up to the girl, still restrained by Katalyn's knife, gasped, and staggered back. "Oh no. Oh no oh nononono."

"What is it? What's the problem?" Droga asked.

"I know her name."

"What is it?" the rogue asked.

"Her name... her name is Ellemayne Glaivewing."

Dead.

Silence.

"How do you know my name?" Past-Ellemayne asked. Her voice was... subtly different from Present-Ellemayne's in a way I couldn't quite place. Perhaps an injury to the throat? Titans knew Ellemayne had enough opportunities for those, given her line of work. Hells, this version of her hadn't even killed Ragnaros yet.

Our Ellemayne laughed nervously. "Well, funny story. You see-"

Past-Ellemayne took the chance to leap away from Katalyn's daggers. She sailed back a good twenty meters and, fast as I could blink, had a bow up, arrow notched. The bow looked like it was Titan-make. Present-Ellemayne pulled her own magical, orange bow out, arrow materializing.

Her past self gasped. "Thori'dal. How did you- what did you do to Rom?"

"I didn't do anything. You see, my name-"

My eyes widened. _Paradox, no!_ "Wait, shouldn't you NOT tell her?"

"It's alright. I remember this, I tell her. You see, Ellemayne, my name is _also_ Ellemayne Glaivewing, and I too, am one of the Kingslayers," Past-Ellemayne's jaw dropped, along with her bow, which clattered to the ground.

"W-w-WHAT?" she stuttered. "How is that - oh. The Bronze sent you back, didn't they?"

Present-Ellemayne smiled, and laid her bow to the ground. "Indeed, they did. All of us, actually. So, if it wouldn't be too much trouble, just stay out of our way, and do not tell anyone."

Past-Ellemayne shuffled a little, clearly preparing to jump away, escape, and call her guild - which Sargeras had yet to chew through like a buzzsaw - for reinforcements. "And how do you know you can trust me?"

"Because I remember that you listen to me." Ellemayne's past version crouched. Instinctively, I prepared a mind flay, but Present-Ellemayne stopped me. "No need for that. She's not going to betray us."

Past-Ellemayne looked back at her future self. "We'll see about that." Then she was gone. Selriona turned to the remaining huntress.

"Are you sure we can trust her?"

She nodded. "Of course we can, Selriona. I remember vividly. My past self won't betray us to anyone."

"She sure looked like she was going to!"

"I decide against it in the end. Alright guys, let's go back to sleep. Selriona, keep watch for another half-hour, then wake up Katalyn." Katalyn groaned slightly, clearly not happy about the concept about being woken up again shortly, but kept her mouth shut.

Save for Selriona, we filed back into our tents, and fell right back to sleep.

I'd have to be careful with my flame.

* * *

><p><strong>'Continues listening to Back to the Future theme music'<strong>

**Review, let me know what you think.**


	52. Chapter 52:Set Back

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Thanks to dharak for catching those embarrasing mistakes.**

**Chapter published 8/29/13**

* * *

><p><span>Amanthe<span>

I woke up to more of the tablets.

Joy.

Before long, we were ready to move out, and the wound poison had faded from my veins, so I healed my arm. We broke camp, and once again began to travel. Droga and I took the rear, letting me inspect his magically-deadened arm more. It didn't take me much longer to figure out where the magical 'knot' was, and then the whole enchantment unraveled under me dispel, leaving me free to heal up his arm.

We entered the Circle of Li - the Circle of _Cinders_, without incident. We also reached the road without incident, and followed it into a small valley. It was quite barren; save for a few trees here and there, nothing grew. It was a very tight fit, a mere three meters across. Selriona'd have a tough time opening her wings if she had to. I didn't say anything; I didn't feel like it. The encounter with Ellemayne's past self had rattled me. I wondered what _my_ past self was doing at this time. Probably going through the Argent Crusade's initiation. Or had I already gone through with that? I couldn't quite remember. How long after splitting up with Selriona was this?

Ellemayne held up a hand for us to stop. Something was up, I felt it. A tingle at the base of my spine. There was a sucking sound, disturbingly similar to the last sounds a whirlpool made in a washbasin, when the water began to run out and the vortex 'slurped' at the rest. Both in front and behind us, light collapsed into a central point, opening an Infinite portal both in front and behind us.

From before us, a drakonid twice the size of the last two walked out. His hand wielded a long axe, with the handle resting against the ground and the blade up by his head. The blade kept shifting; one instant it was a single-bladed wooden axe, another instant it was double-bladed, both edges an Omega symbol, like the kind I heard felguards used. He gestured with his free hand, and his portal closed, leaving only one behind us. He pointed his axe at Selriona, and spoke.

"Selriona, hatched one-hundred and three days after the second Shattering. You will bring unimaginable sorrow to the denizens of Azeroth through your mate. You will not be allowed to escape Hyjal with Verthelion, our master commands it." _Bullshit she will!_ But I wondered... just how much longer would they live? Just how much else would happen? They'd never willingly do something like that, by a thousand years was a long time to change. So was ten thousand, and a hundred thousand...

"Do you not see? We are the righteous ones! The Bronze say that our interference will destroy the future, but that is only on an individual basis. Brought together, the changes that must occur to history will result in Azeroth's triumph! Stop this foolish quest, or all will be lost!"

I wasn't the only one getting irritated with the Infinite. Ellemayne shot an arrow at his forehead. Right before impact, a transparent, sparking barrier stopped it, and the arrow fell apart, rotting in seconds.

The drakonid scowled. "Very well. You have made your decision. Attack the twilight drake! Ignore the others, they are irrelevant to our master's plans!"

There was a series of shrieks from behind us. Droga, Selriona and I turned around to see a dozen coal-black whelps, with silver horns, emerge from the remaining portal. In a heartbeat, Selriona shifted and took to the air, the whelps following after her.

We attacked the drakonid, but it wasn't very good. I cursed it and plagued it, but none of my flames or mind flays, or the others' weapons and arrows, could get _through_ to it. A shimmering shield, comprised of multiple of the same sparkling squares, kept making our attacks decay into nothingness. Meanwhile Droga was busy keeping up with its shimmering axe. It didn't need to defend itself. All he had to do was attack.

Sparks popped in the air above us, following a drake's roar.

Selriona fell to the ground, covered in biting and scratching whelps. She tried to slam herself into the canyon's walls, but more came from the remaining portal, forcing her to the ground.

Something in me _snapped._ "Selriona!" Fires exploded around my hands, and I thrust them both out. A river of twilight fire _washed_ out, engulfing Selriona and the whelps. When it cleared, I ran over to her and wove a quick renew to her, stumbling a bit as my balance faltered. Selriona took back to the air, flying around the drakoni. His magical shield deflected Droga, blocked Katalyn from behind, and stopped Ellemayne, who'd climbed the canyon walls to fire arrows.

Dark blue fire crackled in my palms, and I released another surge of twilight flame as more Infinite whelps emerged. I forcefully ignored their screams of pain, instead releasing surge after surge of fire, again and again, hoping the others figured out a way to kill the drakonid.

"We can't hurt it!" Ellemayne shouted from above. "We need to try something else!"

I swore, incinerating another group of whelps, trying to forget that they were _children. _However, I didn't notice some of them break off from the others, and I was blasted with a half-dozen arcane missiles. I collapsed, but before the whelps could capitalize, something changed.

A glance back confirmed that the drakonid was casting a spell, the square shields rotating rapidly around him, forming a shell that contained steadily-brightening amber light.

"Take cover!" shouted the night elf.

Before I knew what was happening, a pair of three claws wrapped around me and _hoisted_ me into the airs, Selriona grasping me in her forepaws. Next thing I knew, she was dropping me next to Ellemayne, Katalyn emerging from her shadow in some sort of bizarre rogue trick.

_Whoosh!_

The bronze light filled the canyon. Looking back, we saw that all evidence of the Infinite had vanished without a trait. Droga was still there, kneeling with his replacement shield raised. Selriona and Katalyn went down, and began poking around, while Ellemayne approached me.

"Need help with your arcane burns?"

I rolled my eyes. "No need." A greater heal, and the pain diminished to nothing. "I'm fine." I held down a grimace; I'd used more magic than I thought.

She kicked down a rock and kneeled over. "Hey! Can we get some help up here? I can't carry her down."

"Oh shut up Ellemayne, I'm up."

I unceremoniously cast a levitate around both of us, and shoved her off. She flailed wildly as she descended, while I was infinitely more graceful. I noticed Selriona giving me an alarmed look.

Oh, right. Cataclysm, twilight flame.

I tentatively approached her. "I... guess you want an explanation for that, huh?"

"Not now. We have more important things to worry about, like how Droga's been frozen in time."

I sighed, wiping my forehead off. "Thank you. Okay, let's get Droga, Katalyn, Ellemayne and... where's Fluffy?"

Suddenly, we had Ellemanye's attention. "Fluffy? Where is he?" She looked around briefly before settling on the feline in question, on a tree branch, holding on for dear life. She pulled him down from the tree. He seemed to be... frozen. Looking around, I saw that Droga hadn't moved, either. Oh dear. "Oh no, oh my baby! Are you okay? No, you can't answer me. How are we going to fix this?"

Katalyn suddenly took an interest in her boots. "I don't know. Amanthe, can't you remove the spell?"

I shook my head. "No, I can't do time magic. Far too advanced. We could go ask one of the ancients -"

Katalyn jumped as if electrocuted. "ARE YOU CRAZY? They'll kill Selriona on sight, and if she dies, there'll be a paradox, and we _all_ die."

"Not if we can convince them she's not a twilight drake," I countered. "She can change her clothing to something not-threatening and I can just stay out of the way."

She growled. "We are - not - splitting up. That is an order."

What.

My eyes narrowed. "And who, exactly, are you to order me around?"

"I am the second in line to the -"

I scoffed. _Honestly?_ It wasn't often I felt indignation stemming from my rather generous age, but... "The Greymane throne? As if I care about the -"

"HEY!" Ellemayne interjected. "If you two are done, we need to get going! Amanthe's right, we need to go to the ancients, if not to revive Droga and - " Her voice dropped briefly into a babying tone "_Poor Fluffy_, we need assistance to travel down the mountain. We'll _never_ get there in time at this rate!" Katalyn and I both pressed our lips together.

"We need to go to Aviana," Ellemayne continued. "She's our best bet for transportation. It's risky. If she declines us, we'll have lost valuable time, but if she helps us, we'll speed up tremendously. Anybody want to argue?" Nobody spoke. "Good. Now, I'll carry Fluffy. Selriona, you have some of your strength in that form, right?"

She nodded and gave an affirmative.

"Good. You get to carry Droga. Amanthe, put a permanent levitation enchantment on them both." I did so. Truth be told, it wasn't actually permanent, but it'd be more than enough. Ellemayne started to carry Fluffy, and Selriona grabbed Droga. Ellemayne and Katalyn lead us through the canyon. I was next to Selriona, the silence between us thick enough to be cut with a knife. Soon, we arrived in the Shrine of Goldrinh, yet to be destroyed. The road split off; one to the shrine, and another heading left into another canyon.

It was still narrow, but not quite as narrow as the other one; Selriona would have no trouble flying, though an adult would...

... wow that was a strange thought.

Halfway up, we stopped. Ellemayne put down her pet and pulled out more tablets. "Here, lunch."

As soon as we ate them, she suddenly spoke up. "Gather on me, now."

"What is it?" Selriona whispered to her. "Cultists?" That would be perfect, wouldn't it? Fighting the Twilight's Hammer on top of the Guardians, on top of the Infinite. I realized this was how Selriona's early life had been; the entire weight of the world, all the forces in it, trying to crush her into dust. How had she withstood it? As a teenager no less?

"Lots of weak bad guys, or something really big. Cultists I bet. Be on your guard."

I made a show of pretending to be surprised. "Cultists? How would they get here?"

A shadow blotted out the sun, and a familiar dragon landed before us.

Selriona smacked her face as Asphyxion flexed his wings aggressively. "Did you REALLY have to tempt fate, Amanthe? Let me handle this," she said, stepping forward, shifting into her true form and bowing on her forelegs. Funny. Later, it'd be Asphyxion bowing to her.

"Little twilight drake, care to explain what is going on here?" he asked, setting the tune of the conversation in Draconic.

"I don't exactly know where to begin. Perhaps names are in order?"

He nodded. "Very well. My name is Asphyxion. Yours?"

"My name's Selriona. If it's not to much trouble, could you please allow us to pass?"

Asphyxion raised his head, making him seem taller than he was. "Now why would I do that? I recognize the elf. She was the one who _killed my brother_, Vaporelion." Selriona's tail twitched a little at his mention of Ellemayne killing her kin. "Surely, you do not side with those _mortals_ over your own kind?"

She shook her head rapidly. "No, no it's nothing like that. See it's, oh Titans, it's complicated. Would it mean anything to you if I told you it involved the Bronze Flight?"

Asphyxion lowered his head to her's and snorted. "Explain."

"Well, you see, I'm, well, we're _all_, from the future. We're supposed to go down the mountain and reach Sulfuron keep in... two days, I think it is, and we're here to try our luck with getting Aviana to send us down."

He raised his head back up. "And why, tell me, must you reach Sulfuron Keep? Which side will you aid on behalf of the wretched Bronze Flight?" _Because they're better than the Infinite_, I thought.

"Well, neither, it's sort of involving a third party?"

"Is that a question, or is that an answer?"

"It's an answer! So, can we go?"

Asphyxion growled, and switched to Common, clearly hesitant about his answer. "You may pass. Except for the elf. I will take my vengeance on her."

Suddenly, Ellemayne had Thori'dal raised.

_We can't kill him,_ I realized. _He exists in the future, so he survives._

Selriona quickly put herself between Asphyxion and Ellemayne. "She's a Kingslayer, do you REALLY want to fight one of them?"

He snarled, and looked at Ellemayne, opening his mouth and taking a deep breath. She fired an arrow, hitting the walls of his mouth. He reared back with a pained roar, my own hand rising to rub my throat in empathy.

"Now! Run!"

We sprinted around and under Asphyxion, Katalyn carrying the two frozen members of our party. Before we could get far, Asphyxion launched a fireball at Ellemayne, forcing her to jump out of the way, leaving it to incinerate the grass. Asphyxion slammed his wings downward, catching me and the others in a massive downdraft that forced us to the ground. I recovered, as did the others, running on. Ellemayne fired more arrows back at him, but the dragon conjured a shell of dark magic to absorb them.

Wind rushed backwards as he took a deep breath. My eyes widened, and I grabbed Katalyn, pulled her to myself and Ellemayne, and disciplined the Holy Light into purpose.

A hemispherical barrier surrounded us, just in time to deflect the devouring flames. The temperature rose dramatically as the world beyond the barrier turned to fire. The flames ended, and we scurried out of the way before Asphyxion landed on it, shattering my magic with his weight.

"Simply give me the elf, and I will let you all go. Even I understand the importance of when the Bronze transport you through time, paradoxes and whatnot. Just give me the kaldorei," he said, spitting another fireball that Ellemayne nimbly avoided.

A dark blue figured swooped down, scooping up Ellemayne, Droga, and Fluffy. Said dark blue figure continued, grabbing Katalyn and I, sailing down the canyon. Before she could get too far, dark blue chains materialized around Selriona's wings.

_Slam._

_Oof!_

_Argh!_

We untangled ourselves quickly and sprinted down the canyon. We were almost there. Once we reached Avianna's Shrine, he wouldn't dare follow us.

"Nobody will take my revenge away from me! Nobody!" Asphyxion shouted, even as Selriona shifted back to human form.

_Titans, Ellemayne,_ I thought. _You just had to kill his brother, didn't you?_

Asphyxion fired another stream of fire, forcing me to quickly weave an impromptu barrier of light which only barely held it off. We burst out of the canyon and hugged the walls to the side as another jet of violet fire burst out, followed shortly by a roar of defeat. We took in the area.

Trees dotted the landscape, and there was a colossal tree in the middle, the branches reaching up impossibly tall, though not as high as Nordrassil. A kaldorei building slept at the bottom, not overgrown by the tree, nor a portion of it dug out where the building was constructed, but rather part of the bark itself. The air whistled around the trees, creating a harmonious melody that permeated every square centimeter of the region. Falcons, eagles and hawks stood on the top of each tree, seemingly keeping watch, while smaller birds flew circles inside the branches. Dew glinted on the glass, refracting the noon light into the colors of the rainbow, making the grass appear multicolored.

Ellemayne, scooping up the two, glared at my best friend. "Are you crazy, Selriona?"

"What? What do you mean?"

Ellemayne scowled. "Flying _this_ close to Aviana's shrine! Didn't you think there was a reason that dragon didn't fly? It could have killed him! It could have _killed _you."

She swallowed. "I'm sorry, I didn't know."

Ellemayne took a deep breath. "It's alright. You didn't know. I'm sorry, I'm just a little shaken up about Fluffy. Come on, let's go to Aviana. We can ask her to unfreeze these two, and ask for transportation down the mountain."

"What about me? If she's an Ancient, won't she find out I'm a drake?"

I nodded. "Probably. I should stay behind too. You two go on ahead. I don't think the Infinite will try to attack us again so soon. There seems to be a period of time between each of their attacks." Maybe that was why we hadn't been swamped? Maybe sending soldiers after us sort of 'destabilized' the time stream, and the more they sent the longer it was - from our perspective - before they could send any more?

Ellemayne cut of Katalyn before she could complain. "She's right, and they especially won't try to attack with an Ancient here. Come on Katalyn. You take Droga." She handed the worgen the orc statue, and the two departed for the tree, leaving me alone with Selriona.

She turned her head to fix me with a Look. _Uh oh._ "Alright, explain. When and how did you learn to control twilight flame?"

I sighed, avoiding her eyes. I could only imagine how this must've looked to her. But I promised her future self I wouldn't tell her, that I'd make something up.

I shouldn't feel bad about lying to her about this. After all, she tells me to. So why did I feel like scum making her think this? "Alright, so, I was in the cult for a few years after my hundredth birthday. So?" _So?_ _So?_

"The cult is evil, Amanthe," she deadpanned.

"Need I remind you of your first three years?" I snapped, regretting the words as soon as they were out. She was still a child, and at this point those wounds were still fresh. I shook my head. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. I've just been a little off since I came here," I admitted.

"Why is that? Amanthe, what is wrong? You're my friend, you can tell me. If there's anything I can do to help you..."

I shook my head, lowering my gaze to the grass. "There isn't anything you can do."

"Why not? What is it that's wrong, just tell me that."

I shivered. "I - I can't tell you. But believe me, you'll find out at the latest tomorrow." After all, that was when Selriona was supposed to save Verthelion.

She smiled forcibly. "That isn't ominous, not in the least."

Despite my sudden melancholy - oh _woe_ is me - I managed a genuine grin. "Yeah, I guess. Selriona, just promise me something," I asked, still unable to forget Selriona's stinging words when she revealed the truth to me.

"Sure, what?"

"When you find out, when you find out what it is, don't be angry, alright?"

She hesitated. She was afraid. "I promise." An uneasy silence. "Well, what else are we going to do while we wait for the others to get back?"

I shrugged. "I don't know, wait here, I guess. There's a chance Aviana will kill us, but if we leave, she won't be able to keep an eye on any Infinite that attack us. So, just wait here. That's all we can do."

For a while we just waited. I counted exactly forty five minutes, down to the second. "Thanks for saving me back there, from the whelps," she said suddenly.

I gave her a smile. I'd need a lot of those for what was to come. "What are friends for? You'd have done the same for me."

"Indeed, I would have." More , the others came back. Fluffy was at Ellemayne's side, and Droga was in between her and Katalyn. They were no longer stuck in time, moving like they'd been asleep for too long and had a hangover to their hangover.

"Good to see you back in the present, Droga," I teased.

He chuckled. "Some drakonid can't keep me down. What happened to him anyway?"

Katalyn scowled. "He either committed suicide with that spell, or vanished. I hope it's the former. Wouldn't want to meet him again, he's too strong for us."

_Too strong for the Liberality Confederacy._

I nodded. "Alright, so we've got Droga and, um, Fluffy unfrozen. Did you find a way to speed up our trip?"

Ellemayne nodded. "As it so happens, great Aviana did give us a way." She produced six feathers, holding them by the wispy ends. They were brown, maybe a meter long, with white on their edges and a jet of black running through the middle. "Hold these by the harder portion and they will transport us down the mountain a large distance. Do not let go, you will fall. That may not be a problem for you, Selriona, but you'll be left behind."

"Understood," she said.

Katalyn took a feather. "Let us be on our way then. We are running out of time." She adjusted her grip, and shot off. Ellemayne attached a feather to Fluffy with some sort of adhesive, and the feline shot off with a terrified mewl. Droga went next, followed by Ellemayne, and then me.

Hurricane force winds surrounded me in an instant. Before I could register what was going on, the cyclone around my feet had risen to my head and lifted me a kilometer off the ground, and began to ferry me down the mountain like a train off its tracks. I forced my lunch back down - I did _not_ want to see what the tablets were like coming up - as I began to swiftly descend down the mountainside. Trees skimmed past my feet, I soared over a lake, past more trees, and before too long the tornado around me slowed down and gently dropped me down with the others, with about two dozen Guardians of Hyjal surrounding us.

A trap. Of course.

Selriona touched down next to me.

Droga scowled. "A trap! It was a trap, the Ancient didn't trust us!"

Way to go, Aspect of the Obvious.

Selriona groaned and switched to her true form. Several of the guardians came for me, so I spoke a word to summon the Light around me in a shield, drew my daggers, and purposefully faded out to make myself less intimidating. Droga drew attention like a mountain, and like a mountain, he did not budge under the assault. Ellemayne took distance in a heartbeat to begin firing arrows, and Selriona whipped her tail-club at them from above, and Katalyn danced in between the Guardians. In no time at all, they were defeated, and we regrouped.

"Well, that was fun," Katalyn said, shifting to human form.

Droga glared at her. "_FUN? _You call unintentionally aiding Ragnaros _fun?_"

Katalyn shrugged. "I meant the fight itself. Selriona, are you alright?"

She nodded weakly. "That elf said 'It won't be enough'. What could that mean?"

"Which one?" Ellemayne asked.

She pointed at a spot of blank grass, then lowered her arm. "She's gone. I don't understand, I knocked her out. We'd better go, she's probably going to get help for the ones we knocked out." Something in my tingled. There was more to it than that. I was sure.

Ellemayne glanced around, and nodded. "Alright. We're getting close. All we have to do is climb up those hills - " She pointed south, to where the sky was orange and the trees sparse. " - and Sulfuron Keep will be on the other side. Let's get going, we'll rest on the hills tonight." She started south, and we followed after her, the heat of the Firelands quickly making itself known to us. We met a few cultists, but a quick shield to the face courtesy of Droga got rid of them. It was hard, hot work, and by the time the sun vanished below the horizon I was drenched with sweat.

Finally, Ellemayne collapsed on a stone in the clearing. "Here, is where we'll camp. One second, let me get the food pellets out." I sat down next to a tree as Ellemayne prepared camp. I was beat from the march; I didn't even complain about the pellet. Before long, Ellemayne had prepared the camp and Selriona a fire pit. I glanced up as the White Lady and Blue Child marched through the sky. They were lining up. In a few weeks from now would be The Embrace, and Kalecgos would become the Aspect of the Blue.

We went through our shifts. Mine went without incident. I fell back to sleep in my tent shared with Selriona, and in an instant...

... something was wrong. I burst out to see Katalyn and Ellemayne standing side by side, with Droga and Fluffy also ready. Something in the dry woods shrieked.

I dove back into the tent and shook Selriona's human form.

"What what what?"

"We're under attack, come on!"

We both filed out. The sun was coming up, slowly lightening the sky. Two dozen creatures surrounded our camp. They looked like kobolds only in the hunch of their backs, but they were made of conglomerations of metal, bone, flesh and stone, with curved scythe blades for hands. They tore through the trees without second thought, the blades going right through the trunks like they weren't even there. There were more further on, I could see, waiting. In the time it had taken me to get Selriona, the others had engaged in battle, fighting as if against Sargeras himself.

I drew my daggers and charged them. I met their scythes with my blades, and almost crumpled under the weight of the blow. The blow which could tear_ trees _in half. Every now and again I found the opening the blast one with twilight flame, or shear their minds with darkness, but each time they burst into sand two more took their place, forcing us back. Selriona took to the air, providing aerial support, but it wasn't enough, we were backed up against the hill that separated us from Sulfuron Keep.

It wasn't enough.

Suddenly, darkness fell upon the golems. A moment later, a red projectile flew out from somewhere behind me and impacted one. A second later, an arrow followed. It pierced the golem's heart, and the resulting shadowy explosion tore a dozen of them to sand. No golems appeared to replace them. More seeds of corruption flew, each one detonated seconds later by an arrow. In mere seconds, they were gone. Selriona set down next to us. I winced in pain, healing the gashes I'd accumulated in the short but intense fight.

"What the hells were those things?" Droga gasped. "Constructs made by the Infinite?"

"I'm more interested in who saved us," Katalyn said.

We turned around to the peek of the mountain to see two men. One was a short, stout dwarf I didn't recognize, wielding the _exact_ same bow Ellemayne did. The other was a tall elf, barely into his adult years, with auburn hair and red apprentice robes, with a sophisticated staff wreathed in blue flame. The elf jumped down, mischief glinting in his green eyes. "Hello there!"

I stammered. "How did you, you were -"

"Behold!" Mariel spread his arms out to the sides, grinning ear to ear. "Hyjal's summit was merely a setback!"

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><p><strong>Review, let me know what you think.<strong>

**Close. So very, very close.**


	53. Chapter 53:Full Circle

**Disclaimer: I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.**

**Massive, massive thanks to my beta dharak! Cheers for everything.**

**Chapter published 9/4/13**

**I'll admit, I teared up writing this. I hope you enjoy.**

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><p><span>Amanthe<span>

We were all stunned. Mariel smiled, and looked like he might have started dancing any second. The dwarf, still up top with his bow on his back, looked down at us. His eyes strayed over all of us, and fixed on Selriona. Mariel's grin was absolutely massive. How did his face not split in two?

We all asked at the same time, "How are you alive?"

He laughed and took out a little palm-sized orb filled with smoke and shadows. "Come on, you honestly don't think I keep my soul _inside_ my body, do you? Ha!" He put the soulstone back and cracked his arms, groaning as he did.

Droga stammered. "H-how did you catch up with us? Aviana herself sent us down the mountain with tornadoes."

Mariel shrugged, and put his hands together. The stone beneath him rose up to form a demonic horse, an exact copy of the ones I'd seen on Xoroth.

Droga nodded. "Ah, so that's how."

Mariel's smile grew even bigger. "Yup! The thing doesn't need sleep, food, anything really, and it never, ever gets tired. I took a nap while it rode down here. Jumped down a cliff, I died again, but hey." His smile became a smirk. "That's what my soulstone's for." He flicked his hand, and the horse disintegrated back into the earth. "Pretty neat, huh?"

Ellemayne approached him. After a few moments she raised her right hand and _thwacked_ him across the head, before repeating the action with her other hand. "Why in the name of Elune didn't you come to us the moment you revived? And how many times _have_ you died?"

Mariel held up his hands. "Hey, I tried, I tried! But I couldn't see your tracks. As for how many times I've died..." Mariel counted on his fingers for a moment. "About thirty seven, give or take. But thirty of those were bets, so I wouldn't count them -" _Slap._

"How could you not see our tracks?" she asked.

He shrugged, holding his hands up. "So I never learned to track, sue me." I quirked an eyebrow. Really, that old goblin saying?

Ellemayne's face went from her normal shade of violet to a darker, red-violet, and she slapped him again. "And why did you bring Rom here?"

Mariel and 'Rom' waved at each other. "Well you see," said Mariel. "I sort of ran into him on the way down. Um, literally. Sorry about that Rom."

"Eh, no problem!"

"Anyway, he asked who I was, if I was in any guild, I told him, one thing led to another, and presto! He's helping!"

Rom nodded. "Aye, I am. Mariel here explained tha whole situation to me!" His eyes settled on Ellemayne's bow. " 'ey, Ellemayne, what are you doing with Thori'dal? I thought I have it!"

Ellemayne rubbed the back of her head. "Well, you see, you sort of give it to me in the future."

"Why would I do that?"

"You'll see!" Ellemayne snapped. "So, now what? I'm guessing we aren't going to just, you know, run into Sulfuron Keep's vicinity, find Aeonus and beat him up, are we?"

Droga shook his head. "No, don't you remember? We need to plant the beacon to summon Chromie. Only problem is, she told us to plant it near the keep, and you can bet that Ragnaros won't be too happy about that."

I sighed through my nose. "No, he won't. But we don't have a choice, unless you feel like taking on Chromie's future self _and_ Aeonus..." Chromie? Chronormu?

Katalyn nodded. "Yes, we don't have a choice. We'll also need to find Aeonus' time pocket. Rom, do you know how?"

He shook his head. "Not a clue. Ellemayne here was the only one of us who ever so much as _went_ ta Andorhal. She's the only one who knows what ta look for." Rom turned his head to Ellemayne. "What exactly _do_ we have ta look for? It would be better if more than one o' us knew," he said, jumping down next to us.

"There'll be a location lacking the environment of the area. When I approached Chromie's time pocket, the miasma of the plaguelands faded away. When we get close to Aeonus' location, the heat should diminish."

Katalyn frowned. "If we find it. Selriona, at what time of day did you attempt to save Verthelion?"

"Around the middle of the day," she said with a mild tremor in her voice.

The worgen snarled. "Then we don't have the time to simply comb through the area. We need an idea as to where Aeonus will be." Mariel raised his hand, and she sighed. "Yes, Mariel?"

Lowering his hand, he said, "Well, I was just thinking. Chromie's a bronze dragon, right? If we call her, wouldn't she be able to help us find the time pocket?"

We pondered this for a moment. "That's... actually pretty smart," I said slowly.

Mariel rolled his eyes. "Well of course it is!" he said indignantly. "Now - hey, you guys all right? You've got some pretty bad cuts." I glanced around and sighed. Oh, right. I put my palms together and concentrated, praying to the Light for a large burst of healing. Before too long, a flash of golden light radiated out from me, healing them. I sank to the ground, taking deep breaths. Titans, that was...

Mariel clapped. "Well, anyway, let's get going! Sulfuron Keep awaits!" Mariel ran up the peak and stepped closer to the Keep, and instantly staggered back. "Ah, heat wave, heat wave!" I snickered. Selriona turned to her human form and stepped closer to the peak, the rest of us following her. With a pant, Selriona returned to being a drake.

I'd never seen Sulfuron Keep before. It was a looming tower of red and orange, pools of lava surrounding it like a moat, with red volcanic clouds seeping from its top to add to the acrid atmosphere. A ring of light formed on the bottom and rose up, leaving greasy flames licking along the outside of the hold where it went, until it reached the top and the entire building was on fire. Then, like a vacuum, the flames were drawn in to form a thick ring in the middle of Sulfuron Keep, which then fell. Upon contact with the ground, everything within a kilometer was engulfed in a fire nova.

I approached, desiring to inspect it more, but backed away from a furnace blast of heat. I _almost_ swore in the name of the Titans. "Light! How are we supposed to go down there, much less to the keep itself?"

Droga took his armor off and placed it in a neat heap on the ground. "We walk down, and tough it out. No other choice. Unless..." He looked at Selriona.

She shuffled her forelegs, claws digging into the ground. "What?"

"Unless Amanthe puts a levitation enchantment on all of us and you fly us over. The air will help cool us off, and we'll be exposed for far less time." We were silent for a moment.

Ellemayne placed a hand on her chin. "That does make the most sense. With the levitation enchantment, we'll all be much lighter."

It was clear Selriona wasn't approving of the idea, but she didn't make any complaints. "Alright, let's get going then." Without further ado, I placed the enchantments on everyone. "Ellemayne, where's your pet?"

She chuckled. "It's complicated. It's sort of like the spell Mariel uses to banish things, but it's more involved. I'm keeping Fluffy out of the heat until it's time, then I'm going to remove the spell from him."

I grumbled to myself. "Wish you could do that to us. Damn heat."

Not hearing me, the drake nodded. "Alright, let's get going." I got onto her neck, going rigid at the thought of all of us riding her at once. Even with the enchantments, could she stand the weight? I knew she was a fighter, but I had no idea how far her abilities as a drake extended. Ellemayne and Katalyn got on behind me. She took off, and grabbed Mariel and Droga in her claws, leaving Rom to grab onto her tail. Then she began to fly, and I _wilted._

The heat was _unbearable_. Even with Selriona's flight causing a breeze, I felt like Sargeras was roasting me over a pit. I thought I heard Selriona and Rom talking, but with the shriveling heat all around me, sweat dripping from every centimeter of my body, I paid it no mind.

Before I knew it, but after far too long, Selriona set down and we got off.

roga took out the beacon and placed it on the ground. He turned around, seemingly making a protective circle around it. Only, it's hard to create a protective circle with just one person, so the others took to surrounding it, in case anyone tried to destroy it.

After three minutes that were probably scalding to them, Katalyn spoke. "Alright," She wheezed. "Something's wrong with the beacon." We all turned around to look at the beacon. It hummed lightly, a thin beam of light shining from its core into the sky.

Ellemayne stared at it intensely, as if she were trying to pull Chronormu out of the beacon through force of will. "Maybe it's not in the right spot?" She reached down and touched it, moving it to the left a couple meters. The light diminished, as did the humming. She moved it farther the other way, and the glow intensified, the humming transforming to vibration. She nodded, satisfied. "Alright. So we need to put it in a specific spot, and the closer we get the brighter the light and more intense the vibration." She began to walk around with the beacon in her hands as the light steadily increased in brightness.

Panting for breath, Rom had us wait. "Hold up! I have an idea to cool down." He took out a trap and set it on the ground, a blue crystal spinning in its middle. He stomped it, shattering it like glass. A coat of frost surged out, engulfing the basalt around us in a thick layer of ice. We collapsed onto it, eager to absorb the chill while we still could. Far too soon, the ice vaporized, and we got up.

"Alrighty, let's keep moving."

Ellemayne nodded. "Indeed, time is of the essence." And so we continued on.

She kept following its path, right next to a lava pool. The beam of light from the beacon cut up into the heavens, vibrating so loud I feared it would alert the fire elementals to us.

"It has to be here. I can feel it." Ellemayne tossed the beacon into the molten rock, and we all watched as it submerged below the lava, unchanged. For a moment the beam vanished, but then it exploded out in a torrent of bronze light. We all flew back as a shockwave smashed into us, and the light continued to pour up. The air was sucked up with it, as was the lava, revealing the beacon.

It was impossible to see the beacon itself though, sheathed in glowing light as it was. After maybe ten seconds the light vanished, before the beacon began to glow again, this time radiating light from the nine triangles on it. The light twisted around like a thread, forming an apex some fifty meters off the ground. The apex began to radiate light that took a shape, the shape of a wyrm. Light exploded from the central hemisphere on the beacon, red and black and bronze and all sorts of other bodily colors, and flowed into the light-wyrm, giving it substance before the light gave out, taking the beacon with it.

Chronormu landed in front of us. "Oh good, you got here, and..." She raised her snout to the air for a moment. "With five hours to spare? My my, cutting it rather close, are we?" Droga looked about ready to explode at the 'accusation', but Chronormu laughed. "Oh relax, I'm teasing you. It must've been hard to get here. Anyway, let's get to business."

She turned back to her gnomish form, and hopped out of the crater. In one smooth motion, she spun around and held up a hand, freezing the lava that had been in the crater, then blasted up, then falling back down, in time.

"Whew! That could have been a disaster, couldn't it? Well, let's get out of here. It will still splash when I release it, and I plan on being far away when that happens." She looked at the parched people around her. "Oh, that's right. You don't have the air-slowing around you. Just, give me a second..."

She fiddled her hands in the air, and after a moment a bubble of cool air washed over me. I didn't register her words, closing my eyes, sighing, and swayed in the gentle breeze. It felt so... wonderful. After the blazing heat of the Firelands, this chill just washed all the worries right out of me, more than Rom's ice trap ever could.

I opened my eyes back up.

Chronormu nodded. "Alright then. Have you found Aeonus' time pocket?"

Katalyn shook her head. "No, we haven't. The place is too large, and we don't have enough time to search it. We were hoping you could help us find it."

She considered that.

"Well... it won't be easy. Every time pocket is different from another. But, yes. I can." She scratched her head. "Didn't exactly plan for this," she mumbled.

Suddenly, Chronormu clapped her hands together. "Right, I've got it! Follow me, follow me. I know where it is! Of course, why didn't I understand this sooner?" She looked back at our confused faces. "Oh, um, right. You see, one of my future selves told me that the answer would be in the Ascendant Rise. At the time it made no sense, I mean, Ragnaros hadn't started this yet. This clears it all up." Chromie spun on her heels and started walking towards a seemingly random spot. She was ten paces away when she looked back at us. "Come on, come on!" We obeyed her, like we had a choice.

I found myself next to Selriona, who shifted into a human form. I bit my lips. I had to tell her. We were almost there, and then, as much as it killed me (Har de har) to think about, I was running out of time to tell her how I felt. I couldn't even remember how I was supposed to die; for all I knew, a meteor falls on top of me right this second. "Selriona, I want to talk to you."

She looked at me. "Finally going to tell me what you're worried about?"

I laughed. "No, not that. It's just..." I darkened my tone. "We're going to have to fight Aeonus. From what I understand, he is incredibly powerful. Even if these five are going to help me, I still might not make it out. So I just want to talk to you now." To be honest I had no idea what to expect from Aeonus. He was a dragon, sure, but twilight fire adheres to the scales of non-twilight dragons. But then again, time magic...

"Go ahead."

Breathe in... and breathe out. "I just want to say, thank you. Thank you for everything you've done for me, well, I guess I should say everything you're going to do for me, not to mention everything you've already done. You're a great friend, and I'm honestly lucky to have met you, and I'm -" I caught myself before I could say 'I'm going to miss you'.

She smiled, oblivious. "The feeling's mutual, Amanthe. Hey, listen. You will get through this. You can control twilight fire. Aeonus is a dragon, he'll fall to it easily. You. Will. Live. Through. This." _Ha._

I suppressed a shiver. "There's always the chance I won't, though. I want to tell you now." I decided to take a leap. She'd find out soon anyway. I put my arm around her shoulders. "I'm going to miss you."

She pulled away. "What do you mean you're going to miss me?"

I grimaced. "I - You'll find out soon enough"

We soon arrived at the base of the Ascendant Rise. A cliff rose up out of the molten rock, the outlines of cultist buildings barely visible on the top. Chronormu stopped just short of the lava. "Alright, I'm going to remove my air-slowing. That should reveal the true temperature of the area. Here I go." She closed her eyes for a second, and opened them. For a moment the scalding heat of the volcanic landscape buffeted me, but in a second it faded into a dull heat.

Chronormu actually _squealed_ in excitement. "Oh perfect, perfect." She thrust her hands towards the cliff and released a wave of sand. Most of it fell into the lava and melted, but some of it stuck in a spherical shape, outlining a portal. She shook her head in disbelief. "I knew Aeonus was good, but to make a time pocket this complicated?" She whistled. "Alright, come on. They'll be in there."

She launched herself at the portal, and vanished. Mariel followed after her, shouting 'Cannonball!'. Droga simply hopped in, the two hunters leaped an impossible distance into it, and Katalyn pounced like a wolf. With a flick of magic, I solidified the air under me and levitated in, Selriona's wingbeats filling the air behind me.

Darkness blinded me, and then sharpened into a labyrinth around me. It was a wide, circular tunnel that branched out in a dozen black tunnels. The ceiling was quite low, but not so low that any of us had to crouch. Some magical source of light illuminated the others.

"Alright, here we are," Chronormu said as Selriona appeared, still as a drake. "Now before you ask, no, we're not in the middle. You six, group up." Our group, minus one drake, clustered up, and pulling sand out of oblivion, the bronze dragon tossed it over us. "Good, you should be able to see a line on the floor, yes?"

Sure enough, there it was, a golden trail of sand leading into one of the corridors. Mariel gave a thumbs up. "Check!"

She nodded tersely. "Good. Follow that line, it will bring you to Aeonus. Remember, you can not kill him. You can just make him retreat." When we didn't move, Chronormu made a shoo-ing movement. "Go on! Run! Mush, whatever!"

"Sheesh," Droga whispered as we turned around and headed off, following the trail.

Ellemayne groaned. "You okay?" I asked.

"Ah, nothing. I was just so _tired_ back then. You know, past and present selves existing together." She shrugged. "I pushed past it, but damn it feels good to be better."

"Really? I didn't feel anything."

"Hmm. You must've gotten some of the Bronze's magic on you."

"Maybe the sand in the Caverns?"

"Maybe."

Shadows and mist bubbled around us, forming faces and names, whispering around us as we passed through the corridors. I didn't want to imagine what was coming for me.

_No aircraft, no personal, no survivors,_ said a hooded man with a curved sword in place of his right arm.

_The ground runs red with your blood!_ shouted an orc.

_Roar!_ shouted a misty, blocky dragon as it crashed through the walls as if they were immaterial.

_You idiots just made the biggest mistake of your lives_, growled another man with sparks of electricity on his hands.

After what seemed like an eternity of winding through the twisting tunnels, we emerged into a larger chamber, the trail of sand fading into nothing.

This one was a hemisphere, with two dragons in the middle. There were five entryways, one of them being our route. Inside were two hulking Infinite dragons, with plenty of room to spare. I could smell the arcane energy from their cracks all the way from our location.

"You're certain?" asked one in a rumbling, echoing male's voice.

"Positive," said the other, a female with Chronormu's echoing, rasping voice. "This is something I have to do on my own."

"You killed your future self before," the one who had to be Aeonus said. "What makes you think you'll fare any better?"

"I don't know, but I have to _try_, don't I?" She slammed her tail club onto the black ground. "The whole purpose of our Flight is to fight against the doom fate has bestowed upon us. Against entropy, against dying light, all of it! I have to change this fate, or die trying."

"Alright. Be careful, Chronormu."

"Of course." She padded to a hallway, which spontaneously grew large enough for her. Once inside, she craned her neck back, silvery horns sparking with power. "Oh, by the way, behind you." Then the wall grew in like water, making Chromie's Infinite self vanish.

Aeonus spun around, cracked open his jaw, and then there was a sound like rustling leaves from within him.

"Scatter!" I shouted, diving out of the way. As the one who shouted, Aeonus aimed at me, exhaling a thick stream of sand at me. I quickly overcharged a levitation on myself, throwing me into the air, before normally floating back down. While in the air, I sunk into the shadows and looked down. As fast as a bolt of lightning, Droga charged the towering dragon and swung at him with his sword, only to be blocked my claws. The dragon swung his other paw at him, but Droga bashed it aside with his shield. Ellemayne fired an arrow at him, but it slowed down mid-flight, letting Aeonus easily burn it up with arcane energies; the same went for Mariel's shadow bolts.

Katalyn roared, and sunk her daggers into Aeonus's left hind leg. He roared and kicked her with it. She tried to back away from it, but Aeonus had to have used his magic to accelerate himself. The only indication I saw of him moving was that one moment Katalyn was stabbing him, and the next moment she was slumped against a dark wall, fur sliding into her skin.

A flash of silver light. Droga froze, his sword raised and ready to slice into Aeonus's distracted foreleg. The dragon in questioned turned to me, baring his fangs, opening his mouth for another sand breath.

_Not so fast_, I thought smugly to myself, calling on my magic and sending a fireball after him.

_Bullseye._ The fireball hit him right in the throat, choking off his sand and forcing him to fall back, coughing and hacking. Droga was freed from the time lock, and his sword cut a gash through Aeonus's right flank. A blazing arrow pierced his wing joint, and a shadow bolt splashed against him, the scales sizzling where it hit. In his moment of rage and pain, I released an explosion of twilight flame along his back, the fire greedily sticking to his scales wherever it touched. I didn't care if we 'couldn't kill him'. Let him figure out how to remove it from him.

"You're finished," I said menacingly, nailing him in the tail with another fireball, blue washing out black.

Aeonus panted. "The... the barrier..." He shook his head. "No, not- _argh!_" Nailed you again. "Not worth it." And then he was gone, likely having frozen time to escape. Or perhaps he just teleported?

Ellemayne laughed. "HA! That was... actually pretty easy. He must've gotten soft." She tapped the side of her jaw. "No, wait. That's not right. He didn't get soft; he toughens up after this to fight us."

"Huh," Mariel said. "That was... anticlimactic. Sooooo. Anyone got an idea how we get out of here?"

"I got you!" said a new voice. We whipped around to see Chronormu in her gnomish form walking up to us. "Hold still, portals back to your time coming right up!" One after another, golden portals swirled around the Liberality Confederacy, banishing them, presumably, back to the future.

Chromie and I locked eyes, and she sighed. "This must seem so unfair to you."

"I'm still going to die, aren't I?"

"Selriona is still in danger. An Infinite dragonsworn heads to her and an unconscious Verthelion. You need to save him."

"Why can't you?"

"Aeonus's wards are still in effect. They would still keep me and mine out. You, though. The wards won't expect to have to repel twilight energy."

"So teleport onto Azeroth far away, far in the past, and fly there manually!"

"You don't understand, Amanthe. It's already _happened._ If you don't do this, paradox - "

" - occurs and we all die. Fine." I threw my hands up. "You're going to send me regardless of what I think, so just get it over with."

She dipped her head. "As you wish." She sighed. "For what little it's worth... I'm sorry." Then the world was gold, and -

- in the mountains.

In a little neck of the mountains, with the blazing heat of Sulfuron on my back. There was a narrow pass in the mountains, like a sideways L. I saw three figures inside. One was a twilight drake splayed bonelessly on the ground, and another was a very familiar drake hovering over him, frozen in place. The last was a mortal in black robes with gold trimmings, and shifting dagger in their right hand. They kept shapeshifting; a male worgen, a female orc.

"It is destiny," I heard them whisper. "Nobody can fight fate."

_Watch me_, I growled, sprinting with all my might. They turned into a human man, ready to stab Verthelion, when I tackled him from behind. I wrapped my arms around his neck and let gravity do the rest, pulling us to the ground. Before he could react, I spun us around so I was on top, grabbed one of my daggers, and stabbed the dirt he'd been a moment before.

He tsked at me from the other side of the canyon, turning into a draenic woman. "You shouldn't have done that, you know." A flickering Infinite portal appeared over her head, pulling her up into it. "At any rate, goodbye."

I placed my dagger back into its spot at my waist and sprinted, my left hand engulfed in darkness and my right in shadowy flame. "Oh no you don't!" I shouted, leaping after him. We both vanished into the portal.

My magic instantly vanished. The entire world around me was a seething, writhing mass of gold and black, twisting around each other in violent rivers, snakes, whirlwinds, eddies. Tendrils of amber and obsidian whacked me in the head, in the back, on my legs, but I didn't let go.

"Let go!" my hostage shouted. Something purple and gold - my overactive mind registered it as an Orb of Deception - and vanished into the whirlwind. "You're pulling us off course! There's no telling where we'll end up!"

"Where _you'll_ end up!" I countered, leaning back with all my might and pulling the Dragonsworn - now a man of my own species with blonde hair, green eyes and a black little goatee that contrasted sharply with his hair - around. The storm of color and energy around us flickered, shivered, froze, and then shattered around us like glass, an explosion of force throwing us away from each other.

I landed on my back and gasped like a fish out of water. All the air was pushed out of my lungs, and my eyes burned. My bones creaked and groaned, threatening to snap under the unbearable pressure of wherever-we-were. Thinking on reflex, I poured my magic into a shield, probably far more than needed, strengthening it as best I could.

Now that there wasn't a weight like a dragon sitting on me, I could take in my surroundings, panting to get the breath back in me.

Everything was engulfed in a heavy fog. It was very humid, more humid than anything I'd ever experienced, and so _hot._ I'd never experienced a heat like this just in passing. What sort of hellish place _was_ this?

The ground beneath my feet was gray stone, with pebbles and boulders scattered around me as far as I could see. Surprisingly, despite the choking gray fog that had swallowed up the sky, I could see quite far. The ground was smooth and flat with the exceptions of the small rocks. Looking around...

... nothing. That's _all_ there was. Outside of the enemy Dragonsworn and myself, the only thing to see was a scorching, humid fog with no wind, and gray stone as far as the eye can see.

"Where are we?" I whispered.

"You mean when," the man said in a strained voice. I saw that he had his own shield activated, a cocoon of transparent shadow magic around him. But unlike most barriers, his was squashed, forcing him to bend down. I realized my own power word was similar; the shell of Light was bent down in a way I didn't even know it _could_ bend.

_"When_ are we then?" I snarled, forced to kneel by my shield's lack of height.

A crack appeared in my opponent's shield, which he quickly patched up with a flare of time magic. I noticed, with no small amount of horror, a similar golden crack on my own shield. I pressed a touch more of my reserves into it, sealing the crack.

"Welcome to Azeroth, circa a billion years in the future. Give or take a few million. Probably give."

"Where on Azeroth?"

He laughed. "Does it matter? The entire planet's like this."

My stomach dropped. The entire planet? Lifeless, hot, and - somehow - heavy? "This is your goal, isn't it? This is what your Flight intends to bring about."

"Ha! We don't need to do anything for this to happen. Hells, we'd stop it if we could. Not even the Dragonqueen knows this, but the sun ages too. And as it ages, it slowly, slowly, gets _hotter._ If you could see it now, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference, but rest assured it's warmed up."

"How much?" I asked. We both repaired another crack in our shields.

"Enough to boil off the oceans. Enough to end all life larger than a germ. Welcome to the end of the world, twilight. A world where there isn't enough carbon dioxide in the air for plants, so no food chain. A world where the weight of the oceans bears down on you no matter where you go. A world where all that you've known has been ground into dust, and the dust into dust, and melted into lava, and recycled into stone, repeat ad nauseum. This... is deep time." He clapped sarcastically. "Nice job bringing us here, hero." Another crack, but only in his shield. He fixed it quick.

"Well," I said. "At least it seems you're having as much difficulty as I am." My shield bent downwards even more, cracking like an eggshell before I could pour more mana into it. "And most importantly... you're here with me."

Twilight flame rippled along my skin as I sunk into the twilight realm... but nothing happened.

He laughed, forced to lower himself again as his shield continued to deflate. "What's the matter? Trying to enter the twilight realm? Sorry to break it to you, but the twilight realm is tied to the existence of the Twilight Flight. And guess what?! The last Twilight dragon died... let's see... about one hundred eighty-two million years ago."

"You're still here." Another breach. Repair it. Disperse into mist to replenish your mana. Reform. "You're having just as much difficulty with your shield as I am. It falls, and you're crushed by the pressure."

"The same fate awaits you," he countered, wiping sweat from his brow and fixing his shield again. "Even if it didn't, there exists nothing to eat here, and the only water you need to have condense in order to drink. You're doomed to die."

"You first," I countered.

"Ah, but here's the thing," he said with a smirk, fingering the cat's eye brooch around his neck. "I can _leave._" Golden light began to spark around him, but it seemed to accelerate his shield's weakening. Noticing this, he placed one hand on the shield, actively fixing it as he charged up a spell to time travel away from this barren wasteland. Back to the present, back to kill Verthelion and Selriona.

_Like hells._

I got to my feet, but when I tried to rise up even higher, the weight of the fog above me - the oceans of Azeroth if what he said was to be believed - kept me down, as solid as a brick wall.

I frowned, but continued to crawl towards him, my shield cracking rapidly in multiple places.

His depressed shield's interior was filled with golden light, though I could still make out his outline as I approached, bumping my knee on his shield and cracking it. I smiled, and cast one spell, my arm lashing out, whispering its name as I did.

"Dispel."

The air fled from his lungs as his shield vanished, letting the vaporized oceans slam down onto him again. But his spell was complete enough to engulf us both. This time it wasn't us floating in a sea of gold and black, but falling through a tunnel of stretched lights, as if the entire history of Azeroth was flying by past us. There was far too much gray in it.

My shield faded, but I didn't care. All that mattered was reaching for one of my daggers, pulling it out. A purple orb slammed into him, transforming him into a dwarven female before it vanished into the time stream. He still gasped for breath, which the wind didn't help with, even as I readied my daggers and aimed...

_Swoosh._ _Squelch. Red. Fire._

I barely had time to register that I'd sunk my daggers into his throat before rolling off him. We were back in the canyon.

I gasped in pain. My entire gut seemed to clench around some wound. I barely noticed Selriona bounding over to me, her eyes wide and panicked. I waved a glowing hand over my wound, but the pain didn't even slow down as it started to spread from the stab wound throughout my body, chokingly painful. I grimaced. "Wound poison. Something else too." Deadly poison, perhaps? Or maybe something to further inhibit me. Was there poison that could weaken magic?

"Amanthe! Are you... are you going to make it?" she asked.

Suddenly I realized. This was it. This was my fate, my predetermined death. "No. I'm not going to. Damn it, and I was just starting to think I've been worrying about nothing," I said, almost laughing at how naive I'd been. Thinking I could dodge fate.

"Amanthe, what do you mean?"

I winced. The pain was everywhere now, and something else too. My lungs burned. I felt faint, like I wasn't getting enough air. It was getting harder to talk. I had to tell her. I had to, I had to hadtohadtohadto. "I was called to the Caverns of Time. They told me - they told me that I wouldn't survive the journey, that it was a death sentence for me. That's what's been troubling me the last three days."

Her pupils narrowed, and her voice took on the undertone of a roar. "Why didn't you tell me? I could've done something, we could've had Chronormu here to help - "

I winced in the face of her anger. I was getting so dizzy. My tongue felt too big, my limbs and chest too light, everything was just _wrong._

"You promised..."

Selriona backed down, whining faintly. Did she even notice?

"Please, we can find a way. There has to be a way..." she begged.

Harder to talk now. Harder to move. It was... rather blurry. Was I going delusional? Had to. Bleeding out, don't get enough air. Or... something. "You'll know me much longer. My past self isn't dead, remember?" I tried to force my lips upwards into a smile.

"But you're still dying..." Her voice cracked on the last word. Something glistened in her eyes. Something wet and cold on my neck. My breaths were coming in short pants now, but no matter how much air I took in it _wasn't enough, _primal panic building in me.

I forced it down. For her sake. "I'm alright with that, Selriona." My voice dropped again. It didn't even hurt anymore. It was just so exhausting, so blurred. "I've lived for three centuries. I've, I've had a good, long life. I'm ready to see what's next. That's part of the reason why I came here, to die. The other reasons were to help you. Take care, you big sack of scales."

"Y-You too, you squishy human." I was so tired. I wanted to sleep. I wanted to rest. Wake up maybe, feel so much better. But that wouldn't happen, though, would it?

Realization. The final rights for fallen members of our Flight. I didn't expect the words, but I needed to... I needed to...

"I want, I want you to promise me another thing." I winced. My vision wasn't blacking out. It was getting _brighter._ I felt like I was falling. Falling so fast. There wasn't anything in my veins. Not enough. Never enough. "Place my body in the twilight realm and cremate me. Please."

She nodded hastily, but her head blurred and left behind images of itself as she did. "I will. I promise." A faint crack of sound. She nudged me with her snout - I couldn't even feel it - and then everything turned purple. She was still with me.

It was so bright. The light cut through the haze of the twilight realm, coming from a point high above in the sky. I took one last shuddering breath, looking over towards Selriona. I gave her the strongest smile I could manage, and then looked back up.

I felt... warm as the light engulfed me. I still felt like I was falling, but at least it wasn't hard to breathe anymore. At least I didn't feel faint. So I have that.

It got brighter. Muffled words, but I couldn't make out who said them. I felt like I should've recognized that voice. Blue flames licked at the corners of my vision. How silly. Fire can't burn blue.

It was so yellow. The sound of burning fire transformed into a melody. I was still falling... no. I was rising. The mountains around me falling back. What was I doing in the mountains? Didn't I live in Lordaeron?

It was so peaceful. Clouds around me, wispy things with chandeliers of radiant energy on them. The sky was a myriad of sound and light and warmth, filled with faces both familiar and unfamiliar. My mother has the best smile.

It was so warm. I kept rising, rising eternally for the rest of time, feeling all my stress accumulated from the past something years and something events fade away. It didn't matter, did it? Not when it was so warm.

_Welcome, child,_ said a soundless voice all around me. _You have earned this. The Light does not abandon its champions._

_Yes,_ I thought. _The Light does not abandon its champions._

The song was so pure. The warmth was so filling. The light was so bright, and yet I felt I could stare at it for the rest of eternity and never loose a speck of happiness.

It was so... heavenly.

* * *

><p><strong>So ends Amanthe's story. But it's not over, not quite yet.<strong>

**There's one more chapter I need to publish to wrap it up. It's sort of... closure for myself. I hope you didn't mind the 50-80 year time jumps, because what comes next blows them out of the water...**

**Review, let me know what you think!**


	54. Epilogue: Game Over

**Disclaimer:I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard Entertainment does. I have not written Entertainment next to their name since I discovered the 4.3 ending.**

**As one final request, I urge you all to take out the spaces, the dashes in the com, and listen to:**

**www. listenonrepeat. c-o-m /watch/?v=hMXaE9NtQgg**

* * *

><p><span>A Long Time Later<span>

Alexstrasza

There's so... little.

I can't stop the thought from appearing. It's not like I haven't thought the same thing thousands of times in the past, and this time it's no different.

But it's true. There is so very little left. The skies are gray with eternal clouds, the ground is dead, gray rocky plains as far as the eye can see through the fog. Wrathion and I have scouted the planet, and it's the same story everywhere. Mountains stripped of snow and lichen. Ocean beds with no coral. Plains stripped of their forests. All signs of civilization, all signs of life, are gone... save for one tiny spot, one little blip.

It's all I can do to keep Wyrmrest Temple shielded from the crushing pressures.

"Where is it?" I whisper. "I know I felt something. Where is it?"

Wrathion walks up beside me, joining me. His gate is slow and weary, but it's not like there's any rush. Not like we're going anywhere. He sits on his haunches and wraps his wing around my body, sitting beside me just outside Wyrmrest. "What brings you here?" he asks comfortingly. We both need a lot of comfort.

"I felt something."

"Something."

"A spark of life. Just... just for a moment, there was _more_."

"So some bacteria stumbled on a mineral rich environment and bloomed."

I shake my head, jewelry swinging back and forth. "No, it wasn't that. There were... animals. Two mammals. Mortals, Wrathion. Honest to Titans _mortals_. Just for a few minutes."

He doesn't believe me. He suspects I'm going mad with grief. That would be expected, wouldn't it? It'd be hard not to. "Then where did they come from? And why can't you feel them now?"

My head droops. "I don't know. They were just... suddenly there, and just as suddenly gone. Not born, not killed. Just here, and then gone. It's almost like..."

"Time travel?" he asks.

"Possibly. Though we haven't had a visit from the Bronze in a couple millennia."

"Can you blame them for not wanting to come _here?_"

I sigh. "No. No, I can't. It's just, for a moment I hoped that those two meant something. That things would get better."

"I wish so much for that to be the case, Straszy."

I laugh at his affectionate nickname. Titans, when had Wrathion started calling me that? One hundred million years ago? Two hundred? Three?

"I know. It's the foolish hope of an old dragon." I shut my eyes, wincing as a tear forces its way out and splatters to the ground. "I'm going out," I say, standing up and towering over the black dragon.

"What for?"

"I just need to go."

Some small part of me expects him to say something snide. But Wrathion had changed so much, ever since Verthelion had fallen to a dragonslayer guild. Imagine, an Aspect, falling to mere mortals. Not like it would've been the first time. He'd comforted Selriona following the undeserved execution, but no amount of well wishing would've been enough to stop her from following her first mate. After that, whatever unpleasantness he'd had vanished.

I walk forward, off the small platform around the rebuild Temple. I take a deep breath, preparing for the barrier. I pass through it, the invisible barrier that divides that hospitable inside from the harsh environment outside. The pressure, unbearable to all but me, instantly flattens me to my stomach. I grimace and pull myself up, pushing past the headache it inflicts upon me and trodding forward. It's like walking through syrup. Hot, heavy syrup that fills your lungs and presses at your eyes, some two hundred and fifty kilograms per square centimeter.

What I wouldn't give for some syrup. Magically nourishing myself and Wrathion is so... so _bland._

I keep walking. And walking. And walking, until I can not see Wyrmrest, and the land is nondescript around me. But I still know where this is. I've been here many times before, though the plates keep shifting I visit this place enough times to know it used to be the Ruby Dragonshrine.

It's flat rock and nothing more. I've tried several times to use my powers to conjure life - a rabbit, a flower, anything - but nothing ever survives long.

It was almost funny, how often I keep musing on the past. Nobody can blame me, though. It's not as if the present holds many things to talk about. It's not as if there are any alive who could blame me.

Even after all this, after all this time to ponder, I still don't know how this happened. I've always been old and wise, but not wise enough it seems. I thought myself old at sixty thousand years, and I kept doing so at eighty thousand, a hundred twenty thousand, five hundred thousand, and ten million years old, now a billion. I'd seen species rise and fall, the mortal races coming and going, each time being replaced and reshelved, all their history lost had we dragons, the one constant, not preserved it. It had gone on and on like that for a while. I'm not exactly sure how long. Two hundred million, perhaps. Who's counting?

Nozdormu was, after Neltharion, the next to go. One day he simply summoned the other Aspects to him. He expressed his last condolences, his last words, and then left to be transformed into the Infinite. Oh we still saw him after, saw his past selves in our future, but we always knew. Always knew what was waiting for him.

Speak of the devil...

A flash of golden light, and the bronze wyrm falls down. He gathers himself and fights the pressure. "Sister," he says in a strained voice. "Fancy seeing you this far out."

I narrow my eyes, and lash out with my claws. The movement is hard, but I've had a long time to get used to it, and I _whack_ Nozdormu across the face. He didn't even bother forseeing it.

"How _dare_ you," I hiss. "How dare you show your face to me after letting all of this happen!"

"All of this?" he asks.

"YES all of this! You could've helped me. When, when the carbon dioxide levels started to fall and plants shrunk, animals and mortal races shrinking with them... do you _know_ how hard I tried to find a solution? How hard Freya and I worked to combat the rising temperatures and dying life? You could've told us something! Don't tell me you don't know how this happened, you know _everything! _You could've given us a hint! Told us how it was happening! We could've - "

"Done nothing," he says calmly, ever patient and that _infuriates_ me. I open my jaws, summon my flames... and a tiny fireball pops out, falling harmlessly to the ground.

"There's nothing that could've been done," Nozdormu continues. "No force we could've mustered, no allies we could've gathered, that would have stopped Azeroth from falling apart like this."

"We could've tried," I whisper. "You could've, for once in your _life_, tried. Freya killed herself when we failed. The other Watchers followed. We could've _tried, _damn you!"

"And died tired," he says dejectedly.

I growl. "Why are you even here, Nozdormu? I've just had false hope dangled before my eyes and snatched away. Here to taunt me even more?"

"I'm here to say I'm sorry."

I sit down, an action that takes no effort under the pressure, and scoff. "Let's here it then. Bear your soul for the first time, why don't you. I'm sure it'll make everything better."

"I'm sorry for being aloof. I'm sorry for letting you suffer, for letting your Flight suffer and your charge suffer. I'm sorry for being a... a horrible brother." He locks his eyes with mine. "Alexstrasza... Straszy - "

"Only Wrathion's allowed to call me that," I hiss.

"Wrathion's alive too?" he asks in surprise. Could it be genuine?

... not a chance.

"He's inside Wyrmrest. We're keeping it shielded from the worst of the pressure, but we can't extend the bubble any further."

"I see. Sister, I am dearly sorry. But my work means that - "

"Your work means that you are to defend Azeroth," I say hoarsely. "Your work means that you are to keep the planet organized and alive in your own way. And guess what?"

I summon my arcane magic, and lash out at the immovable stone, scorching it. "We failed! We all failed! So unless you're here with some magical I.W.I.N. button that can reset everything and keep this, this, end time from falling, I don't want to hear it!"

He's silent for a short time. A few hours at most. "I'm sorry you feel that way."

And so, to end the last time I'd ever seen him, Nozdormu winks out in a flash of bronze.

I lower my head. "I'm sorry too."

* * *

><p><strong><span>A Very Long Time Later<span>**

It's getting harder to maintain the barrier.

It's not a surprise. Over the two and a half billion years since my creation, it's steadily been getting hotter. Much quicker as of late, and the fact that I need my barrier to also keep out sulfuric acid does no favors.

My magic's been getting weaker, too. The ley lines are dying. Slowly, gradually, linearly, but dying. I can't remember the last time Wrathion's used magic.

Wyrmrest's been falling apart for ages now. As our bubble of hospitality shrinks, worn down by the rising heat and our falling power, the Temple melted, piece by piece, under temperatures that can melt lead. The Chamber of the Aspects is all that remains, the roof gone to expose an acidic yellow sky of sulfur clouds. It's dark, too, the layers of atmosphere letting almost no light through. The Chamber is no longer underground as it once was. It's a coliseum of broken portals and shattered dreams on a dead world.

So very dead. So little life. There have only been single-celled bacteria for ages now, but with the hellish environments, only the extremophiles can eke out a living. They can only survive underground, in little pockets where maybe - just maybe - there's still liquid water. Still water period.

"So what does that make it?" Wrathion asks as he moves his claw, pushing the dragon-sized piece into place. "Me, one billion three hundred million eight hundred seventy two, you one billion three hundred million nine hundred eighty seven?"

"Eighty eight," I correct. "Seventy one for you." I move my large queen. "Checkmate."

This is what we've been up to. I wish we could say we've been productive, that we've been solving the great problems of the universe and figuring out how to save Azeroth from this scorching death and bring back the Age of Life. The truth is, there's no point in philosophy when there are only two of you to have opinions. There's no point in trying to save Azeroth when all your magic can barely preserve a Chamber. All Wrathion, my dear Consort for the past eternity and a half, have been doing is... existing. Indulging in whatever small pleasures we can find.

We deserve them, don't we?

Wrathion flicks his tail. "How did you do that?"

"You over-commit to performing checkmate. You stop looking at the rest of the board. It's the same mistake you made in your last personality change."

"I see."

And so many personality changes indeed. Time is enough to do that; to go from spiteful to loving to hatred to begging for forgiveness to melancholy to outright depressed and back to spiteful.

I've been stuck on melancholy for a while now. Have been, really, ever since Ysera died shortly after Nozdormu's 'farewell'. My poor, poor sister, who'd thought her nightmare over...

Oh, how Kalecgos and Verthelion comforted me. They were true brothers, if not in blood then in spirit. I don't want to think about what I might've done without them; I've already thought about it a million times.

I spit out a tiny ember. I'm growing weaker, in terms of fire and life magic. After all, those powers were tied to life, and there's so little of it left, and even the extremophiles are slowly, one at a time, going extinct. At least it's not as bad as what happened to the Blue Flight. Watching as the ice caps shriveled up, their frost breaths drying out.

Malygos was lucky not to have to see that. Kalecgos too. Though, why didn't I comfort Verthelion with the death of his 'brother' as he had when I lost my sister? Why? So many regrets. And so little, so little I can do about it.

The sky rumbles, and I decide to humor the storm and look up, lightning arcing back and forth on the clouds' underbellies. I've seen enough storms to predict the lightning almost exactly. There, there, there. Got them all. There, there. So on. Ooh, seventeen correct streak. New record.

Maybe the goblins were right.

Now _there's _a new thought. I tune out Wrathion's complaining about chess to entertain this new train of thought.

Maybe the goblins were right. Their X-52 Nether Rocket only made a brief foray into the Great Dark Beyond, and even briefer into the Twisting Nether. The other mortal races at the time, even the gnomes, cared little for it, and so the goblins too gave up.

Maybe they shouldn't have. Maybe we could've taken that idea. Moved to new worlds, hospitable worlds. The problem is that the Burning Legion, before being eradicated, had driven so _many_ worlds to being uninhabitable there would've been nowhere to go. But with the rocket, we could've looked for places. With advanced versions of it, we could've _gone_ there and escaped this death trap of a planet while we had the chance!

But no. It wasn't to be.

Maybe if the mortal races - no, no fair pinning it on them - maybe if we _all_ had cared more about technology, less about magic, maybe then? Maybe if we'd been more adventurous, maybe we could've made it.

... this train of thought is depressing. I'm not looking forward to repeating it in the future.

"It's dead! It's dead!" I hear Wrathion wail, and I snap my hearing back to reality.

"What's dead?"

"The planet," he whispers. "I've been feeling it cooling down. Volcanoes die down, earthquakes weaken. But now it's... it's stopped. The heart of the world has frozen over. I can't control them anymore." He opens his mouth, and hacks. His crop gurgles, but no lava comes out. "I can't even reshape this stupid chess board!" he shouts. He focuses his gaze on it, willing it to melt back into the rocks he'd summoned it from. I notice his glowing red eyes have stopped that, and they are simply pupils with a red iris now.

"Wrathion, I'm... I'm so sorry."

He crawls towards me, knocking over pieces, and buries his snout in my neck, sobbing quietly. "It's dead, it's dead. I can't do this anymore. I can't, I can't. There's nothing left, not a scrap. I can't do this. I can't, Straszy."

"Ion, what are you saying?" I ask, even though I've had the same thoughts enough times to know.

"I can't keep going. I _can't._ I've always had hope, you know." Hope? Oh poor dear. What a dreadful thing to have. "But it's... it's gone. The only thing keeping me going is _gone!_"

"What about me?" I ask. "Will you leave me here?"

Wrathion pulls away. "Alexstrasza... I - I don't... I can't... I don't know."

"Please, Wrathion. _Please._" I lower myself and put my head between my forelegs. "Don't..." I stifle a sob at the prospect of what he's dooming me to. "Don't leave me here all alone."

He keeps backing up, reaching a wall of the Chamber. "I'm sorry, Straszy." He turns around. "I'm not as strong as you. I can't handle it!" He runs, smashing through the brittle wall and beyond my barrier.

"Wrathion!" I shout, rising and reaching out with a foreleg, but it's far too late. The intense heat doesn't melt him. It _vaporizes_ him, and Wrathion blows away in the slow wind, looking for all the world like a rusty smoke cloud, which disperses far too quickly.

He's... he's gone.

Wrathion is gone.

I'm all alone.

That thought crushes me. It strangles me. All alone, with nobody to talk to, with no one to comfort or to comfort me, to hold me in those long eternal days that are indistinguishable from the nights. All alone on a desolate world with barely enough bacteria to fit on a _pinhead._

I choke down a sob, and then another. I won't be weak. It may be stiflingly hot and the universe may be conspiring against me, but I will not cry. I will not. That's not water slowly evaporating on the ground. No, that was a natural tremor that knocked over that chess piece. It doesn't matter that I'm the only dragon left, that I'm the endling for dragons. I'm _fine_ damn it!

Endling.

Thinking, I painstakingly take off my jewelry, and lay the purple and gold metal in a pile at my claws. With a barely concealed roar, I strike them, sending them flying out the same hole Wrathion had made, where they melt.

The dragons died slowly, near the end. We'd held on long, but as the rising heat slowly collapsed the food chain, the wyrms couldn't hunt enough to support themselves. Soon, neither could the drakes. Staying in mortal forms solved the issue of starvation for a while, but not procreation. And then... there wasn't enough even for whelps, and I was barely strong enough to keep my barrier up and me and my mate healthy. There'd been a dozen of us hiding under the shield at the start, but one by one...

Now we're all but gone. I am the endling for dragons. Not their Aspect. Not their queen. After all, a queen has subjects, has servants whom she serves, and I have nothing but ashes and dust.

And so melancholy turns to depression.

* * *

><p><em><span><strong>An Extremely Long Time Later<strong>_

I know how it happened.

I still don't know _why_ it had to happen, but I know how.

The sun is the sky.

It's an enormous ball of churning red and orange - mostly red - that completely engulfs the sky. There's hardly any horizon, either; the proximity of the sun has melted the planet, and the plasma of the sky and lava of the surface blend together in the distance. It's blown away the crushing atmosphere, and the only air left is what little I keep around myself with the last of my magic.

There is absolutely no life beyond me, if this can even be called life. The White Lady and the Blue Child are gone, absorbed by the behemoth. I'm always facing the sun; there is no night, just an endless day. It wasn't a sudden thing, either. The ballooning sun would rise and set slower and slower until, eon by eon, it stopped and one day would just not move from the noonday position it had crawled to. It's gravity is strange. It's almost overwhelmed Azeroth's and pulled me into the sun, so I feel fairly weightless.

The ley lines are almost completely gone, especially with the melting. After nourishing myself, I only have enough power to protect a small bubble around myself, freezing the lava beneath me into a black raft and mildly cooling it. It's still combustingly hot, hot enough to melt metal.

Why can I stand the heat? Is it because I am an Aspect, with all five Hearts within me? Or because I'm a red dragon? Just dragon? A life form? I wonder, for the thousandth time, how much labels mean when I'm the only one to label. I want to forget that there used to be others to label, that the world used to be full of life once, but no matter how hard I try I can't, even though Azeroth has been lifeless for far longer than it hasn't.

Five billion years old.

I don't even know my hatchday anymore; not like it makes a difference when there are no more _days._

I wish I could've stopped this, but I know now. We could never have stopped the sun. Never have cooled it down, not even the Titans. The Titans shape _planets._ This is a _star._ I could never have prevented this, not with a billion trillion times the power I'd had in my prime.

Heh. Prime. Funny, I'd once considered myself unaging. It just turns out I age very slowly. Five billion and middle aged, can you imagine?

Something... flickers in me. Something hot that has nothing to do with the lava and the red giant. I open my mouth, and speak for the first time in an epoch.

"I hope you're happy," I whisper, my voice cracking with disuse.

I take a deep breath. "I hope you're happy!" I roar to the uncaring heavens. "Sargeras, the Old Gods, all of you! I hope you're happy, wherever you are, because _YOU'VE WON!_"

I sit down, the anger gone as quick as it'd come, replaced by cold, near-insane depression. That wasn't as cathartic as I'd hoped.

Something else flickers, but next to me instead of inside. I don't even both to look at him as Algalon teleports next to me. He's as red as I'd last seen him, with the Legion's fall. The stars rising around him tickle my scales he's so close, sitting down just as I am. He seems... taller. Or maybe I've shrunk. Either way, I haven't seen stars in a while. I wish I don't now, either. They remind me too much of hopes I'd once had, of dreams that never came true.

"Alexstrasza," he greets, his red blending in with the background. "The Dragonqueen."

"Don't call me that. I'm not a queen. I haven't been one for ages, Algalon."

"As you wish."

He sits with me there for a while.

"You realize there isn't much time left. Minutes, hours."

"Good. I can finally pass on, and then... and then... I don't know, but it can't be any worse than this mockery of life."

"So you say."

I sigh. "Why are you here, Algalon?"

"I want to know if you have anything you wish to finish, any last words to utter before the sun consumes this planet."

I ponder this. "No. I've said all there is to say and thought all there is to think, a hundred thousand times over. I've imagined this very conversation more times than I've cared to count." I look down at him. He hasn't aged a day. "Why did it go like this? Why does it have to end this way? I mean, we won, didn't we? The last faceless slain, the last undead laid to rest, and the last demon banished. So why, after all of that, did we still lose?"

He ponders this. "The cosmos does not owe anybody anything, least of all a happy ending. For all their madness, the Old Gods were right in saying that all falls to chaos, as the second law of thermodynamics demands."

I frown, looking straight up at the looming sun. I can see little flares and arcs of plasma. I've had a lot of time to get used to its light. "So it truly was all for nothing. All our effort, all our sorrow and joy, reduced to oblivion because of some physical law?"

"It hasn't been for nothing," he counters.

I turn on him, narrowing my eyes. My eyes that, without the power of life, have ceased to glow red and are, ironically, baby blue. "Oh really? Not for nothing? If it weren't all for nothing, then why have we still _lost?! _Look at all of this, and tell me it amounted to anything!"

"You haven't lost. You've won, you've conquered the evils of the Twisting Nether. This is simply... finishing up. Even without that, you're not the only planet in existence. There are many others. Many of them travel the stars as the Titans do. Some use magic, many use technology, which is oddly enough, more powerful than magic in shaping the heavens." He pauses. "Their technology could've saved this world. Still could now, should they arrive quick enough."

"You're avoiding the question." Was that a bubble popping in the lava? That's... actually new.

"Apologies. You see, the others, they know about this world. They know, through me, its histories and triumphs. The universe is a dark and lonely place. It is our job, as sentient beings, our duty if you wish, to light up that darkness with our lives for however brief a time, so that when you view history, you can see that all of us have lit up the heavens for an eternity."

"And when we all die? When eventually all life comes to an end, and all traces of it are ground to oblivion? What then?"

"Then it _is _for nothing, but we don't let it get that far. We stop it from happening, fight with all our fury to keep the flames burning. For even if one civilization falls, it can raise another from the embers and so, live on. That is the meaning of life; to glow bright and light up the cosmos, and stand tall upon the shoulders of giants, so that those who invariably come later can see the shine you've created."

I sigh. "Even if that's true, it does little to comfort me. The past doesn't mean anything to me. Not now. Maybe if Ion were still alive."

"You're wrong, though."

"Is that so? Wrong in what?"

"It does mean something to you. The history of this world is important to you, however much you deny it."

"And what makes you say that?" I ask. I try to summon anger, but nothing comes.

"If you truly didn't care, if you truly felt it was all for nothing, you'd have let these protective magics fall a long time ago." And with that last rebuttal, Algalon fades into stars, teleporting back to the heavens beyond.

I scoff, watching the lava around me boil, the sun slowly get just a tad brighter.

"Let the magic fall." I might've chuckled good-naturedly in the past. I just huff. "I suppose you have a point there, Algalon."

I look around. The entire ocean of lava around me is boiling, slowly steaming. The raft of stone beneath me is heating up, cracking. My magic isn't enough. Not any longer.

So, this is it then.

I cough, a tiny ember flying out. I actually smile. I haven't made an ember in billions of years. I feel warm, and it has nothing to do with the sun.

I look up at the sun as it continues to close the distance. The vaporized rock around me and the plasma above me blend together until I can no longer tell up from down. The raft beneath me vanishes into oblivion, and my magical barrier is finally overwhelmed.

I gasp as fire nips and rips mercilessly at my scales. Plasma flows into my lungs and spreads throughout my body like the tendrils of a fungus. I wonder if maybe it could've been better. It surely could've, right...?

I close my eyes and see... Eonar blessing me. Fun times with my siblings. Neltharion's fall, and his redemption. The Lich King's helm. Sargeras exploding. The Defias launching a vessel and the Blue Flight electing Kalecgos. I see my children enslaved and murdered, my tormentor cackling. I see Wrathion throwing himself to death, I see Verthelion and Kalecgos engulfing me in their wings as I mourn my sister, and the Alliance and the Horde clashing on the battlefield, all in the name of what they see to be right. I see two mortal children visiting me in Wyrmrest, asking to see my true form.

No. I wouldn't have changed a thing. I wouldn't have given up this world of warcraft for anything.

I open my mouth, floating in the belly of a star. "Goodbye, Azeroth."

_It's been fun._

* * *

><p><strong>And indeed it has. What a long, strange trip it's been.<strong>

**I - I just... there's so much I want to say. So many feels. And so few words to say it in. I just want to start off by saying, thank you. One and all, each of you who reviewed, or favorited, or followed, or just plain _read._ It was all of you who gave me the strength to see it through. It was you who kept Selriona and Amanthe alive as long as they were, and without you all this story would never have lasted until Selriona's first trip to the past. I may have typed up this story, I may have come up with the plot, but it was you all who, in spirit if nothing else, pushed the 'Publish Chapter' button each of the One Hundred times it's been pressed. No joke, one hundred. It would be one hundred and two, but you push a different button for the first chapters of a story. I'm truly blessed to have had you as my readers.**

**And what a story it's been. 646688 words, 78849 views, 370 reviews, 130 favorites, and 109 follows, at the time of my typing this. I never in a million years would have ever dreamed that my first major project would ever reach these heights. And there will always be those who climb higher than I, and I look to them with nothing short of pure admiration and, for what it may be worth, respect. I'm looking at you, Iceworth (Formerly Dusty the Umbravita).**

**I started playing World of Warcraft back in the Vanilla days. I have no delusions, no rose colored glasses, looking back; Vanilla was frustrating as _hell_ with all the endless, monotonous grinding. Burning Legion was better, and Wrath was difficult - even moreso than the previous ones - until people started to outgear everything by a mile and a half. Same trend with Cata; harder, but seems easier because you quickly outgear everything.**

** I didn't understand much of WoWback then; it was just a game my dad played that suddenly intrigued me. I have faint memories of playing Dark Ages of Camelot as a warlock, but that's all it is now, faint memories. My first character was a human paladin male on the PvP server Vashj. I joined a hungarian-speaking guild (I'm fluent in the language, so I fit right in despite my age), I was holy spec even though I had no real idea what that meant - all I knew was that people in the raid took damage, and it'd be rude to let them die, and I had no idea why I had to run away from everyone else when Baron Geddon placed a living bomb on me when Divine Shield removed it with the touch of a button.**

**What can I say? I was barely eleven.**

**I quit playing WoW for a while then, with my pally at 60 and my warlock alt (Inspired by Dark Ages of Camelot) at twenty-something. I think. I don't remember. All I know was that I left while Naxxramas was the newest thing, and returned to WoW once Illidan's world first was a thing of the past.**

**I left my old guild, and went to the PvE server Kilrogg. I leveled up my Pally to 70, but the interest faded, so I quickly rammed up my warlock to 70 and made him my main. There, I joined the english guild (Only my first guild _wasn't_ english) Angry Angels in Karahzan. And no, I won't bother to check the spelling on that. I loved that guild to death, and was quite hit when the guild leader all of a sudden, seemingly out of the blue, disbanded the guild.**

**My next guild was on the same server, a guild by the name of Ignotos. Ignotos was - and no offense to Angry Angels, you guys were awesome - leaps and bounds ahead of my old guild. I still remember raging over unlucky Malchezzar infernals, and casting Rain of Fire over Nightbane's skeletons. I remember going into Gruul's lair for the first time, the guild's first time. We wiped so much on the first boss we were joking about hiding in the skeletons, then jumping out and scaring them to death. Just before quitting time, the clouds cleared and we beat him, then got beaten up by Gruul once or twice.**

**We put him on farm status shortly after. **

**I remember going to Serpentshrine Cavern and Tempest Keep long before I felt we had the gear, yet still kicked ass. I remember the endless, _endless_ wipes to Al'ar. I remember the amazement I felt as we downed Anetheron in Hyjal with people who still needed loot from Karazhan, and then running around as a zombie biting everyone, while my warlock got a shiny new toy called 'Chaos Bolt'.**

**Wrath was fun as well. I was the second lock in our guild to hit 80. I was there for our first Firefighter 10 kill, our first Yogg10 kill, and our first cracks at Algalon10. For our first pull I was on Collapsing Star duty with our hunter who doubled as our 10man raid leader. I even came up with the cooldown rotation for the Big Bangs then, even though we never lived past the first one back then. Though I was still very young back then - still am now. **

**I never got the title of Kingslayer, I never got to see phase 3, or even _see_ the fight beyond the time the 15% buff came out. I'll admit I resented those who got it first, and those who got it after. I should've been there! I should've had the joy of downing him! I'd played the game for so long, I deserved to see The Lich King fall before the new guys in the guild! I'm ashamed at myself back then, even if I never showed anything was wrong. I actually cried over it. Over a video game. For shame. Which is why I took a break for the rest of Wrath - I'd gotten emotionally attached to pixels on a screen.**

**Then Cata came around.**

**I'll never forget watching in horror as our 25 man raids dwindled, as more and more people stopped raiding, and we were forced to go to 10 mans only. I never even got to see Cho'gall, let alone kill him. But it was then that I first performed the quest Coup de Grace first, and out of my pity for those poor, poor twilight drakes, laying there on the ground, this story was born.**

**It was nothing back then. I had a TI-84 calculator. I downloaded a notepad function and typed up the story in bits and pieces, as the memory was funny. I called them Twilit1, Twilit2, up to 4. It was nothing short of complete and utter crap. If I posted that here, you would turn around in a heartbeat and never look back at it. The plot was all different too. For one, Verthelion was the one who got shot down. Selriona was Selria. Amanthe didn't exist. The Kingslayers were Alliance-only, and didn't even have a guild name. I'd be amazed if the entire thing came up to 5,000 words. And now...**

**Jesus, this story's grown. I'm proud of myself. I never would have imagined my first major project would have received such a warm reception. I suffer from crippling Atelophobia, the fear of failure and not being good enough. As such, I don't often put myself out there. After all, if I don't try I can't feel the sting of failure, of rejection, of being _looked down upon. _**_  
><em>

**But this story, it's _good_. I can never say I regret publishing this, not in the decades that shall come when I look back on little old fanfiction dot net and see the story nobody has viewed in five years. It warms my heart to see people think that, and it's only through you all that I agree with the notion that my story is worth anything.**

**I'll be honest, I stopped playing in I believe June of 2011. In other words, I quit WoW before Firelands came out. I've never logged on since. Nobody else in my family plays anymore. After Blizzard fucked up Deathwing's story, and all the story after it, I can say I'm happy to have left WoW on a high note.**

**But I kept writing, because I loved Selriona, I loved Verthelion. I still do now, even if not playing for two years has taken the passion out of my love for them. I've poured my heart and soul into this story for well over two years now, and I'm happy with the result. I've given my characters their woes and joys, their happy endings and their grisly endings. I wouldn't change a word of it, even the early bits where I kept changing tense and had no real idea what I was doing - thanks again, Iceworth, for whipping me into shape. I owe you a debt I shall never be able to repay.**

**And now it's over.**

**To be honest, it could easily have been over a long time ago. I debated for a long time to just end it at Coup de What?. To scrap Full Circle, since sequels never live up to their precursors. And I can say confidently that's true. Full Circle has nowhere near the hits Coup de What has. That thought has torn at me many times over the months. And since I haven't been playing WoW, my motivation has dimmed - it took 8 months to write CdW, while this not-much-longer story took me a year and a half. But I regret nothing, even if my emotions don't always agree with me.**

**God, there's so much I want to say. I've daydreamed writing this author's note, this epilogue, for weeks. Months, even. There's so many things I'll have forgotten to type in here, which I'll remember later and kick myself over. Things I'll think up later, and then fight down the urge to nudge them in. But this is the end, this is the final appearance on Azeroth for me, my final WoW story.**

**Which is why I suppose I even wrote _this_ chapter. I could easily have ended it with Amanthe's death and nobody would have blinken twice. But I needed to wrap it up, I needed to say goodbye to Azeroth in the only way I really know how; by ending it. No loose ends. I had to create just absurd, billion-year time jumps in order to give myself closure, in order to say that I have given my characters and the characters borrowed from Blizz, maybe not a happy end, but an end, and an end that I came up with myself. That I won't be tempted to pick up another story in this universe of even more waning quality, one which I am confident that, with my fading interest in WoW, would never be completed, and would haunt me for all time.**

**Not like I even _have_ an idea for a third story.**

**Plot bunnies shall attack me upon this chapter's publication, I swear.**

**So many things I want to say, want to type, but shall forget to. So many special shout-outs I want to give, but I feel they aren't needed because you all know who you are. And if you don't, then assume YOU have my special shout out. You people have said that this is publishing quality. Just because you say that, I believe you. I can say that I am a good writer, and thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for that ability.**

**And now?**

**It's time to take a bow.**

**I feel I've rambled on far too long. This author's note has grown large enough.**

**Thank you, one and all, for your attention these past 640k+ words, and for this 2k+ author's note. I wonder what note I shall go out on. What final words of wisdom. Perhaps a quote? Perhaps a traditional 'The End'. A fancy line-divider born of my own imagination? One final thank you? Just a goodbye? No. I don't think I'll do any of those. Maybe I'll come up with my own quote. Stretch my philosophical muscles a bit. Maybe something in tune with this final chapter, of a burning sun and withering planet, of the purpose of life as Algalon - and I - see it? Or in line with Selriona's struggle for life, or Amanthe's fight against fate. Or maybe not. After all, it's hardly my ending to type, not when I could never have gotten so far on my own.**

**This ending, is yours to imagine.**


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